Love language
When I was all of nine, I met a boy for the very first time. It was the pure affection, his borderline obsession, his peculiar antics and the preference of my company over anyone else’s during playtime, that made me adore him. In my limited vocabulary, I told him that I loved him. In his tongue-tied demeanour, he
ran.
And years later, when I found poetry, I also found you.
We used to kiss in rhymes, then make love in free-verses. I described your smile as incandescent and being next to you as sublime, but I guess it was a writer’s curse — to be left behind.
When you no longer graced my crumpled white sheets, I tore you apart, like a badly written first draft.
It’s been years since I spoke our language, the one we had invented accidentally, in our serendipitous collision. I honed my skills in different ones instead. French, Spanish, Hindi. I am some sort of a wordsmith in English now, yet I remain most fluent in your ways —
the language of your body, your mind, your curls, your smile, your gaze
I love you
so much still
in spiralling soliloquies
in long winding sentences
and even longer paragraphs
which then turns into
never-ending books, written entirely
in the language
of your absence.
The impermanence of permanence
I took no pictures tonight
and I, am all about capturing
those fleeting moments.
but one look at you
and I saw a striking comet —
made entirely out of possibilities.
I even dared to hope
I even dared to dream.
your presence nurtured something neglected inside, parts of my heart that hadn’t been tended to, in a while.
one look at you
and I wanted to seek home
in your arms.
and I imagined us
continuing to be us for years to come.
I dared think about
a permanent kind of love.
but one look at you
and I knew, even forever
would fall short.
as words do right now.
Jharokha (stone window)
I was never a princess
being held captive in a
mysterious tall tower
deep in the woods
but I was indeed a
woman, trapped
behind walls
of her own making
a few bricks did fall
to the ground
briefly, when you’d
come around
and then
the visits
stopped
(my heart stopped)
and I sat at the windowsill
day after day, cracking at my brim,
at each crack of dawn,
waiting still —
and what were once the windows
to my soul, my eyes,
they slowly
turned to stone
only nobody could see
through me.
Shrutee Choudhary is an actor, a confessional poet and an author of two poetry collections. She likes to read, travel and tell stories through every possible medium.
You can follow her on Instagram for more of her writings.