Modern Love Poems: I Wake Up Missing You by Shrutee Choudhary

[Note from Frolic: We are so excited to continue our series of modern love poetry from the top poets on Instagram. Next up is part 6 of a collection from @shruteechoudhary. Read part one here.]

4. I fell in love with you in a way
that even metaphors couldn’t help describe.
I wanted to write
ballads to our romance
free verses
to some occurrences
that could not possibly be rhymed.
perhaps write a cinquain about holding hands for the first time
a limerick about that first date
and a sonnet about the surreality of it all, the intervention of fate.
but I was so happy and happy people
don’t write poems, they say
so I sit here now
in present day
writing a poem about
poems and you
and about how we bid our goodbyes
in a haiku.

5. the dream from last night has my eyes draped, still. like a projector playing it on a white dangling sheet. it is so real. we are talking over the phone. talking about things
I’ve wanted to tell you. things I’ve assumed you’ve wanted to tell me.
my subconscious is yearning for a closure
that will probably never come.
maybe it’s best that way but
the mind is a mysterious thing. it makes me dream very real dreams. we talk for hours, you know?
you tell me you finally went to Japan. you’ve got a steady job, I don’t remember
if you’re dating. the mind remembers what it wants to, the bits and pieces that it
knows will not hurt. because we are always conscious about wounds. and I’m still scraping
the scab over the one you left. that deep, deep cut.
it itches sometimes like an alarm clock set to remind me to think of you.
like I’d need a reason.
we talk about why you disappeared
without a goodbye and in my dream you say, it was too hard.
you’ve been writing books that you never intend to publish. your aloofness is still
frustratingly endearing to me. your eyes come closer to mine which is funny
because in my dream, we are talking over the phone. but I’m seeing you.
the brackets of your smile. the tousled curly hair. you’re using your soft voice, one that you’d concocted just for me.
I wake up missing you. the wound is fresh again.