First Love

I gave you years –
I waited in years –
I gave you my love
Washing its font with tears.

I spoke no ill
As I bore your lies –
I waited and waited and waited –
For a last good bye –

You kept me hanging –
I loved you still –
I have your side –
And I always will –

You ignored my pain
Because you wove it well –
And that you lied –

No one could tell.

Now as decades pass
I can say without regret,
That I have remembered
What you chose to forget.

Yet what creates pain –
At this our very end –
I’ve called you my first love –
You called me a dear friend –

your book

I was cleaning a drawer
Filled with documents and such.
A book I had stashed away
Peeped out from a corner.

It had your poems and accounts
And an old, faded rose.
I forgot if you or I had saved the bloom,
But your handwriting was enough
To send me into a spiral.

The pages of the book were yellow,
Your words were written in pencil,
Your handwriting curvy
And almost illegible.
It was a struggle;
Then your voice
Shone in the words.

The first paragraph I read
Struck me—like a surprise hug.
It was about a sadness
And a wait—like all of life,
With dried petals caught in between.

You reached out to tell me
The written word means much;
It finds light and memory
Through life’s corners in dirty drawers.

Unmade

No matter how hard you want it
And youth makes you believe otherwise,
That people who love you will stay
And not bargain and deal in lies.

The parents, who made you you,
Will want you to be them instead;
Siblings you played with, and cared for,
Will one day wish you dead.

No matter how much you deserve love,
The people you opened yourself to will go;
And whatever you learnt of love and the heart
Will cease to remain just so.

Like the food you love and eat;
But which is excreted in a few hours,
The hope you cling to shall wither
And reach the end of all flowers.

As you age your body will wither,
Your mind will fall numb and your heart will fade,
Youth will come to mock your hunger –
In its laughter, will you be unmade.