It changed

Your cognisance of my love,
The stripping of your mask of incognisance,
Hasn't abated my joy or misery,
Of being in love.
The uncertainty reigns,
As it always has.
The doubts stay put,
The qualms linger,
Your fears are exposed,
Worsening mine.
What I've earned,
Is freedom,
The freedom to dream,
To dream unbridled.

Mitigator

You lied,
To delight me,
To entertain me,
To liquefy my trepidation,
To settle my doubts,
That stemmed from my inadvertent knowledge,
Of those antecedent lies,
Or so I believed.

You could have lied,
Through your teeth,
Unrepentantly,
Because lying is your forte,
Because lying treats your senses,
Because lying has become your wont.

 Lies never dampened,
Anything they ought to have,
Your lies showed more of you,
Whom I couldn't help relishing more.

I lied,
Not out of mockery,
Not out of spite.
But to lighten yours,
To mitigate those pangs yours deliver.

Words

We subsisted on them,
Feeding our minds with them,
Molding our emotions with them,
Discovering each other in them,
Indulging in an orgy of them,
One of 'words'.

What are you but words,
What am I but words,
What are memories but words.

When emotions dissociate from words,
What are words but graves.
Graves of the moments,
Moments that we devoured together.

Diffusion

    When you were really young there was always somebody to look after you; somebody to watch you cry, watch you fall as you tried to walk, watch you poop and to watch you cry after you pooped. That could probably be why I cried less much when compared to the other kids. I was content with being watched.

   And soon you had playmates. The world seemed to be composed of umpteen little games, when life seemed to be all about winning or losing them and there was no middle-ground, no delay and no unforeseen complications. Though it's not 'life' which you were worried about back then you had begun to think about that word. Whether you played 'The police and the thief' or seven-stones or Scotland Yard or an indianised version of some game originally designed for the western kids(You've been misinformed about the way things work in India through these indianised versions), they were playmates around you.

   Then there were books into which you buried your head. You were gladly allowed to do that, without questions, without restraints because people considered it healthy and commendable to do so and weren't aware of its pathological limits. Never-mind, there were books for company.

  There were friends who introspected with you, who rejoiced with you, who mourned with you, who appeased your senses with sense, who found sense in your rant; some stayed, some walked in, some walked out -often unannounced, complying with the vagaries of distance, vocation and 'life'.

    They were boyfriends/girlfriends - whom you never tried to reason with, never tried to unravel.

       

   To me the entire 'life'(I wish there was an alternative word for that), seems like a battle against loneliness. Whether I am at the winning or losing end, I've never been able to say.

          

Metamorphosis

I was this person sculpted,
Not by your words,
Not by your deeds,
None of these was I sure of.
I was sculpted,
By your expectations,
Never pronounced,
Always perceived;
By your love,
Never perceived,
Always imagined.

I was this person,
Whom you wanted me to be;
The rest of me,
Decimated in your presence.

As you were unveiled,
I was recast.
The person I knew as you,
Was on the verge,
Of being replaced,
Of being buried,
By the person you are.
The unrest,
The doubts,
The worries,
The qualms,
Dissolved as I heard your voice,
The voice of the renewed 'you',
The voice that shall renew me.

One answer

That tiny figure,
With her tiny fingers,
Resting on her milk teeth,
Those teeth separated by intruding brown lines,
Another hand clutching her clothes,
Her clothes which told me tales,
Tales of her play,
Tales of her scuffles with her playmates,
That shrivelled hair,
That never had the lustre mine has,
Yesterday's milk that dried on her chin,
Leaving the shape of a yet undiscovered country,
That layer of fine dust,
That was her makeshift talcum,
The insecurity that she seemed to exude,
As she stared at me through those large inquisitive eyes,
Unmindful of her sister, her miniature,
Whose hands were evidently awaiting a coin from me.
Do I call it luck,
Do I call it destiny,
Do I call it facticity,
That she happened to be the one she is,
And I the one I am?
There's just one answer,
An undeniable one.
The greed of the avaricious few.

When it died

There was a fear,
Fear that never showed,
Fear that manipulated my actions,
Fear that animated my emotions,
Fear that comforted me,
Fear that flourished on hope,
Hope that my fears wouldn't come true,
A cruel cycle that wouldn't spare me.

There was a fear,
Fear that blurred boundaries,
Boundaries between pleasure and pain,
Between the right and the wrong,
Fear that withdrew me,
Into a world of its own.
Fear that concealed the truth,
The lies, the doubts, the joy,
Fear that impersonated,
That spineless creature called me.

The fear of your walking away,
Your footsteps resounding brutally,
Killing the fear -my sole clandestine ally.

The fear died,
When you walked away.
What died in me,
I will never know.
There is a fear,
Of your breathing life into what just died.