Aparna Chatterjee

The poetry in me
Is not mine
It is hers...
And she is not me
She is the lover
And I am the wife.

She comes in me
Time and again
The uncalled for guest
Yet I always play the host.

She details her sorrows
And I listen to her
Lending my patient ears
To her endless pathos…

She gives me love
And I, my sympathies.
She beseeches me,
Implores me,
Moving me to tears,
She cries with me...
Offering me her poetry.

I offer her my
Consolation.
Telling her to live on…
So that life gets its chance
As Death comes only once
And forever…

She has been true to life,
Yet life keeps playing
With her…
Enticing her
With the hope of miracles,
Prodding her to believe in God
And some faraway dreams to live for…

Yet reasons aplenty to die for…
If Death could only come
And relieve her of this tiring game
Where Life seeks her, pursues her,
To go on striving to live
Till Death finds her
Hounded and persecuted…
And tired of living life itself.

She isn’t a Coward –
She tells me
She’ll fight on…
I keep hearing her story,
The same old story
Again and again…
Yet she doesn’t bug me.

She says that
She is a part of me
I deny it, she accepts it.
And so, me and she together
With our denials and acceptance
Of each other…
Remain close confidantes
As she has the time for me
And I for her…

Loving him hasn’t been easy
She knows it, I do too…
Impossible living without him
Yet we both live on…

Addicted to love,
With his thoughts,
Dreams and desires…
Both of us -
Mere mortals living like animals
With pangs of hunger and thirst
Never going away…
Would there ever be
Any Respite?

Wish our souls had no bodies
And our minds were without hearts
May be then -
It would have been easier
To live on, to keep existing…
Like body-less souls and
Heart-less minds
Sans the pain, the tears
The feelings and desires...

In perpetual pain,
This existence…
She always tells me
And I always listen
Like a helpless friend,
Unable to heal the pain
She feels within me…