[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.