Modern Love Poems: Memories Blur with Time 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. your face was quiet

not an ornament 

of a smile

no basking in the glow

of winding fairy lights

you’d known pain 

like I had known it

so only I could recognise

the griefs, the nightmares

the screams

of a hushed voice

we wilted away slowly

in poetry and proses

because

they bled by thorns

but you and I 

we were killed

by roses.

2. it’s marvellous how 

one finds their way to the one 

they belong with

sometimes, it’s a journey across

countries 

sometimes, even the stars 

have to align a certain way

and sometimes, you’re sitting there 

right across from them

the Universe watching in anticipation 

two people so perfect for each other

be this close and never meet.

3. I like to read about everything. Sometimes I just sit with my browser open and throw strange questions into the vast space of the Internet, and get answers. It’s comforting to know things.

My parents often tell me stories of how I’d always look at things with a sense of wonderment and how my favourite thing to ever ask was, “why?” They’d get annoyed sometimes, they’d really feel proud the other times. So they’d get me encyclopaedias to find my answers in. I loved answers.

I once read that humans shed the upper layer of their skin every two weeks. That’s how scars fade and wounds heal. So your kiss has already been erased from my lips and my body has forgotten your touch. That’s relieving.

But then I also read that some cells don’t renew at all. That’s how our skin wrinkles and ages. What if you left an impression on those very spots, and all that you ever made me feel will only grow with me? Because I still remember. More vividly as days pass by. That’s terrifying.

Memories blur with time. The mind weakens with age. But somehow, it always finds a way to remember what our skin may forget. That’s strange.

I wish I was a brand new person, one that had never met you. But you see, that’s not possible. Some part of you has mingled with some part of me in a way that it will never detach. Why? I still don’t know the answer to this one. Sometimes, that bothers me but sometimes that’s comforting too, you know. Not knowing.