Category: Written in 2026

I Was Loved

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Are you in those ashes?
Were you burning in the pyre?
Can water take your essence?
Did your love submit to the fire?

As your body burnt I watched;
I could see the cancer still fight;
But wasn’t it you who stood shaking
And loved and played each night?

Who knew that night in May,
When I opened the door of that crate,
You’d make my family complete
And staunchly become my fate?

Your brother I loved;
I called him my first born son;
But how you took over the house –
How you made us run.

You ran too,
even when your limbs said no –
Your eyes shone bright,
Even when I was letting you go.

My love burnt with you in flames,
As it did with each who died before,
And I don’t know if it’s right to say:
But I will always have room for more.

Most don’t understand
How very large love can truly be:
The more it hurts the more it grows –
It bears outward to infinity.

Thank you, all of my children,
I may have shared a few years with you,
But you taught me about life and death
And to cope with a love so very true.

And though now my heart burns still,
Long after your ashes have grown cold,
And pain is a part of my life’s story
They’ll say I was loved when my tale is told.

Goodnight

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

I sit by your picture in the mornings;
And keep my vigil by the light’s burning;
My mind gives my body quiet warnings,
But they both succumb to my heart’s yearning.
I watched over you in your final days:
Keeping your tumours dry and your eyes wet;
Though cancer has its insidious ways,
Its horrors could not make my love forget.

I’ve your ashes in a pot, atop flowers;
So I may yet sit with this part of you.
I know the sea will claim this too, in hours;
But no power can take my love from you.
I shall, in time, not softly cry at night;
But now, sweet girl, I just bid you good night.

Minutes & Hours

Published on by Harpreet ChhachhiaLeave a comment

Hours and minutes, minutes and hours –
My anxiety ticks and has me game;
The controller controls my mind,
For a while, I lose your name.

It’s dangerous to run this loop,
But grief has come to stay;
I act out in ways I never liked –
But I can’t rail at the sky and pray.

So I address death on my own terms;
I know well to look him in the eye;
Not weeping, I set up a funeral;
Because a lifetime is left to cry.

A dog’s heart fails to understand
Either your death, life, pictures or flame;
Yet she reminds me of smiles ahead,
With no hint of anxiety or shame.

So the hours drag on in memory,
Marking moments I can’t forget;
It’s a different grief and anxiety –
Untouched by regret.

The pyres are burnt and done now,
Releasing the tears into moon rivers;
The fortunate have done with their crying,
While exhaustion leaves me in shivers.

Funeral tears and mourning wails,
Cascade a torrent into life’s sea;
And some tears are dammed for later,
When there will be more of death to be.