by Komal Kapoor
If you want to be with me
you will make it happen;
there is no bad timing
just excuses.
I didn’t know you wear glasses,
you say.
Only for reading, I reply,
wondering
who have you been looking at
all this time.
Your attention is manic
I wither away, like a peony
under darkened skies
forgetting the touch of your light
for long stretches at a time,
yet I await your return.
How can someone like you
like someone like me?
you ask.
How are you fine
handing me all your sorrows
unwilling to take any of mine?
You lost signal
in the middle of the sentence.
I waited by the phone
yet you never called back,
but I saw updates
on your Instagram.
I have been swallowing
these words for far too long
I just need to say aloud
I love you.
I have been hurt before,
you reply.
Can we take it slow?
I care for you.
I understand,
I lie.
Who needs labels?
you ask.
Let’s just get to know each other.
Sure,
I lie
when I should say
goodbye.
And like last-minute work
skipped workouts
decent bedtime,
leaving you becomes
another thing I put off.
In the end,
it is the things I do willingly
that weigh on me most.
Love leaves in missed good mornings
and forgotten coffee orders;
it is always the small things
that matter most.
My desire for you grew
yours for me faltered
and that should have
been the end.
I understand the comfort
in empty promises.
Like drinking Shasta,
pretending it’s Coca-Cola.
I question
your intentions
never
your goodness.
I pour happiness
to water your soul
but nothing works
I must let you go
I cannot bear it anymore,
how you love
your sadness more.
It is a constant battle:
walking towards
walking away
from you.
I miss you, you say.
I convince myself,
you just need more time.
I cannot love you
I will not love you
I shall not love you
these silent reveries
stay with me all day
because I can tell
this love will destroy me
and though
it is nothing I cannot survive
I am too tired
to keep this uncertainty alive
so just leave
or stay
whichever you choose,
do it all the way.
I am drowning
in the shallow waters
of your affection.
There should have been more.
There is a light felt in the embrace of love
a cozy pastel or shimmery gold
but you are neon red
the pause-and-go of a fast-food joint
your words synthetic sweet
infused with corn syrup lies;
there is nothing natural about you
your freshly thawed words
dished out in mass supply.
I’m lovin’ you, you say
to every new bae, I learn too late.
If I had paid more attention
I would’ve tasted your artificial ways.
Even as greener pastures beckon
I want to stay for just one more taste;
a glutton for your temporary love,
this naive sin nourishes me today.
You reach for me in your sadness and
I forget I cannot lift you out of it
I forget you want to pull me down
just for the company.
Intimacy makes friendships stronger,
you say.
The man karaokeing on stage gets louder
Good times never seem so good, he drones on
I look around, wondering if someone would
tell the man he’s singing too loud
the man must know, he’s in the wrong.
We should go to my place,
you say.
I feel the salt at the back of my throat
threatening to pour out,
then pity pricks my eyes as I realize
you are missing the point of it all, this life
the bliss in calling one person your own.
I imagined
a hundred things
I wanted to do with you.
You imagined
a hundred things
you wanted to do to me.
Sorry I placed so much
value on your words.
You see,
I thought you meant them.
Time with you now feels
like a trip to Taco Bell;
great in the moment
regretful the next day.
I missed you, you’d say
even though we’d texted
all day.
Back when you remembered
the things I told you
and asked questions,
quickly learning
about me.
When you have me
you cannot be bothered
to look my way.
Do you remember
when we fell in love?
I do.
The memories are
the only thing
that keep me tethered
as we drift apart.
But I am learning,
slowly learning,
those are not enough.
I untie their knots around me,
slowly learning
the art of moving on.
Madness is no notifications
and a Read.
Humans should come with
macronutrients & warning labels
Yours:
35% goodness
65% evil
9 grams of kindness
32 grams of bullshit
Beware: dangerous to consume,
lethal to love.
Well dear, I suppose
you don’t really know me
for all you do
is talk about you.
Slowly,
you seem to be
like everyone else in the city.
Looking over my shoulder
to see who else is in the room.
Wanting to be
someplace more exciting,
with someone more exciting.
I begin to envy
the bald eagles,
the alliga
tors
whose monogamy
comes without thought.
I am a master at self-deception;
I believe in your words of love
even as I stare at your eyes of lust.
I am not ready for a commitment,
you say.
I am sorry.
The silence is dense
with condensation from your words
clinging to our faces,
a rotten-sweet stench envelops us.
You look away from me and
I wonder if you can feel
the quake in my chest,
if you can hear
the roar of my heart.
You sit silently,
I feel each limb fall apart.
Yet I stand up, willing my organs
to continue functioning, my bones
to remain twined and carry me out.
I have no words left
perhaps my swollen tongue
may never utter another word again.
I gather up my limbs
and organs and bones
and hope and dignity and love
and drag them out the door.
I extended my world to you
shyly, heaving under its weight.
How casually you turned it down,
like extra butter on popcorn.
.
.
.
{only monsters do that;
now you know what I think of you}
I envy people who can talk of love
calmly, casually
like discussing a favorite app or brand,
as if it is something everyone has.
You said sorry without
understanding why,
that is when I should’ve known
I needed to let you go.
Sweetly, profusely
you always apologized.
His work is difficult, I’d say,
he is so sorry.
They shook their heads
and muttered, Again?
And then there were
too many missed dates
and forgotten promises.
I had to admit,
your apologies were a blanket
to smother my questions.
I had to admit
you never cared to know
what was wrong.
I had to admit
you never intended to stay.
Some nights I stay up wondering
what you are escaping or looking for
in the different beds you spend your time.
Are you trying to forget
the pain of a love unreturned
or are you searching for an old lover
in new faces every night?
Tell me, why wasn’t I enough?
I am not your vacation home,
your place away from reality.
I’m flesh, blood, feelings, emotions,
not a piece of realty.
Don’t ever forget that.
I see updates of you
in rooms I no longer recognize,
Insta stories with strangers
{new baes, I wonder?}
Even offline
you remain on my mind.
Maybe what hurts most
is how easy I was to get over.
How you have another
before the goodbye has begun.
Look what you made me do:
Tinder Reactivated
Others are gentle and listen
caring I have never known,
yet my heart races
only at thoughts of you.
I am trying to learn
how to mourn
the loss of something
that never really was.
I am insufferable to be around;
I get myself drunk on thoughts of you
and vomit out words of us
from an imagination overused.
I worry about unfilled cravings
uncorrected mistakes,
I worry about me, without you.
I have photos of you, of us
tucked away beneath jumbled socks.
There is one of you writing at that diner
we sat at for hours.
I cannot see your eyes but your smile,
I look at it when I’m blue.
Did you keep mine too?
Send me some, I want to see
what you captured of me.
That is who I am, that me with you.
I would rather be remembered
through your eyes
than mine.
Stray glances and last-minute hangs,
the signs were there all along
I chose to ignore gut instinct
and carried on with fledgling hope—
I saw so much of me in you.
I waited for you to recognize
what we had was special
maybe, different,
but you had blindfolds on as well.
It must have been in my most
egotistical of moods
when I believed you loved me too.
When they ask you about love,
does my name ever come up?
I swallow words,
sticky sour
like mornings of beer
and tobacco aftertastes.
Sticky sour words
that turn into land mines
when kept too long
words exploding, uncaring
of celebrations or joy,
of time or resolve.
Sticky sour words
that I cannot scrape off.
Do not ask questions
for which answers
you aren’t prepared to hear
—I remind myself.
But in the not knowing
I find my madness.
Maybe the hardest part
is letting myself feel the pain,
acknowledging
you had meant something
we had meant something.
At least to me.
Despite it all, I admire your work;
how beautifully you destroyed
first my walls, then me.
It is the silences I miss the most:
driving down winding lanes
destination unknown,
inhaling the crispness of trees
sitting on bar stools
with music too loud for conversation,
lying slumped against my staircase
unable to speak all the words
corroding my insides.
You were always there
and my silences had a home.
In moments of stillness
it is still your page I refresh.
Your love had a
limited vocabulary.
Your wants.
Your needs.
There were no
words in your dictionary
defining how to love me.
You never claimed to love me,
I thank you for that.
In the end, I blame myself
for believing something
never said.
Now I am left with doubt
on what was truly felt.
Your words were like poetry
{or maybe your lips}
you knew how to swing
the pendulum of emotion
sometimes like Neruda
sometimes like Poe
at times, we were a fairy tale
at times, a horror show.
I hoarded your love
from the very beginning
as if I knew
it’d be in limited supply.
Hundreds of photos of you
of us
numbering far more
than the days we spent together
a box full of memorabilia.
I have made something
out of the nothings you gave me.
I am good at giving meaning
to words that held no feeling
to things that were meant to be
discarded from the beginning
I am too good at trying on love
that was never my fit.
I break my own heart a few times
before understanding it is over.
I wake up excited, forgetting
the empty side, the parted lover.
Let me be clear, I did not need you;
but oh how much I wanted you.
I now see how unoriginal our love was:
you—full of pickup lines
me—a bundle of poetry.
I took responsibility
for your emotions,
that was my mistake.
You let me,
and that was yours.
It feels unfair,
the act of will
required to leave you
when falling in love
was never a choice.
The brain is inaccurately
likened to an operating system.
See if this was an OS
I could block certain terms
like your name,
from popping in memory
a defaulted screensaver
when my brain is on pause.
It should be a universal law:
when two people are together
their love for each other must equal out.
Maybe like gravity or motion
perhaps finite math—anything tangible.