One childish love

It was simply pure

My love for you

Like paper boats which

Kids place in puddles

On fresh rainy days.

I was drawn in, deeply

By the kindness I saw

and gentle tender moments in

Wee hours of tingly nights.

I jumped with sweet glee

Leapt for eager hugs and

Stealthy kisses in dusty bushes

Way back in the day.

Maybe the shows of affection,

The hefty gestures

Lay obscene, vulgar.

But they’ve now fizzed out

And love to this last date remains

A fucking meaningless

Four lettered word.

I wish I grew up quicker

Punched time in its face

To pursue mature, stable love.

But time laughed mercilessly

As I watched dumbfounded

Again like a child, a weepy one.

All said and done and dusted

The question remains: was it love

Or just a poor, stupid imitation?

 

On love

for ten whole years, I’ve fussed and fumed

from fourteen to now edging twenty four.

annoyed I was initially, at my new found idiocy

unable to grapple with what love was, how it worked.

shakespeare told me “it’s an ever fixed mark”

“must be true” fifteen year old me, agreed.

the bard died when I first saw love fade

like the last lamp on a fumy diwali street.

i then spent time listening to songs full of mush

starring lip-glossed girls and shy looking boys,

the gentle riff of a guitar on moon kissed nights.

“pretty love no?” i remember chuckling to myself.

and then, i took the quest even more seriously

when adulthood dawned one september,

and i stopped loving my own person.

I watched keenly the cynicism of love

which plath and sexton fed me at age 18.

the next few years i gave to myself a

feeble diet of cheeky, plastic movies

which made love out to be an achievement.

a ‘serendipity’, ‘begin again’,  a ‘post.script’

on long, nostalgic, brilliant love letters.

I stopped. I gave up, said it was ‘about time’

and belligerently shunned my research.

over the last couple of years however, this love

arrived at my doorstep and asked of me,

to pen down my witticisms on love.

because to love—it seems—meant

to pen down your heart and watch

even more keenly as it crumbled

and rebuilt itself, all over again.