By Brishti Roy
To you who I loved a little
More than myself and a little
Less than my Ma
I promise I won't speak in metaphors.
But to you I must describe how
It isn't love, my love
Is a pale blue sadness when you go
But it is painted in all the usual colours of everyday despair
It keeps your promises and breaks its own in the hackneyed metaphors ahead.
It is not patient like yours.
Nor in any way kind.
It is angry and needy and sometimes wilfully quiet.
It speaks often, and often quite right
But rarely makes sense to me after a night but
Mostly, it makes you leave and
God, it cries
So much, it drowns.
My love is a coward, it cannot rebel
And when it chokes on itself,
My love seeks you
Fancying that you know...
But you don't, do you?
You're just as clueless as I or
Even more.
My love is mad at your love for
For never trying to be enough
It knows, your love is from another world.
Now my love thinks it is done for
Love shouldn't need loving back but
Mine does. Or dies.
I'm strangling my love in an abandoned home
Then tell me, why can't I stop writing
Love poems?