Modern Love Poems: I’m Not Mad, You Know? by Shrutee Choudhary

[Note from Frolic: We’re so excited to welcome poet Shrutee Choudhary back to the site. She’s sharing more of her breathtaking modern love poems with us!]

1)

I’m not mad, you know? 

People communicate with gods unseen 

all the time, all in the name of

faith

so I haven’t seen you

for all I know, even our shadows

could not have met

and yet — when the night 

stretches its arms, I feel a tug

on my own body

as if parts of me are tied to

an invisible string

and the string is tied

to you 

so when the sunlight cups my face 

I search for you 

almost every daylight

all in the name of

love.

2)

We began to make sense

like refrigerator magnet poetry

and that’s how I knew

that your crescent moon smile

would hold me captive

that someday, I would immerse 

into your ocean skin 

and that night when I finally kiss

your sea salt lips, laced with tears

I will know the taste of love.

3)

it took me a while 

to understand

you were the kind of dream

that would never take off from 

my pillow

you’d leave me, as soon as I’d leave my bed

so I slept for longer hours instead 

making the most of our time

in this twisted perception of mine

pushing the limits of my elastic heart 

until it finally broke 

and I couldn’t even find 

the misplaced half.

4)

a mistletoe hovers

over two lovers

in December 

a kiss to remember 

body to body

soul to soul

love sculpts

humans enfold

life is a pottery class

we break our hearts

but in the end, we learn

we aren’t supposed to be alone 

the 306 bones in my body

have missed you for seven months

if I could measure the aching of my heart

on a scale, I’d say infinite 

a mistletoe hovers again

it’s a december bane

I can feel my disheveled atoms

and yours, prancing towards

each other

on all fours 

then again, it’s that time

of the year

hold on for a few more days

my dear

5)

at 4 am i think of when my bed sheet was a puddle of blood and you were not on my speed dial

pain isn’t pain when it is all you feel, then it is normalcy and i have been hurting for too long 

existence is for the living so maybe i am in a purgatorial parallel world, where the split second in which i don’t ache, is the worst part of being. 

and at 4:10, i think of when i was a branch unbent 

how fleeting time is and all it holds

the photographs i make are remnants of a past, a return to your arms

the scent of your body is yesterday

but it still lingers. and on most evenings i think of when your scent was tomorrow laced with undertones of hope.

most nights i think of forgotten things which rest now in the ocean of my own making. they tell me i spend too much time looking back but they don’t know, that is where my happiness is

and that is where you are.