A Tradition Of Taboos Poem by stephanie Ann Lowe

considering my life without you, reduced me to tears last night.

If selfishly i allowed it to show; my pain will become yours, you know, And I cannot be the cause of your suffering.

My Heart doled out a share for wisdom, and one for love in vein, another for hope, and still yet one more..of pain.

Forgive me my love.
I am but human,
plagued with the trappings of attachment.
With a heart that would hold on.

I know that i love you even more than i love being 'us'.
In this case, it calls for suffering alone.

I rail against the absurdity of our situation.
I never suspected that your mother, would hold prejudice,
Not with having raised such a beautiful and kind-eyed man, with the openness of a child in his heart.

How can i ask you to go against her wishes? ten thousand years of culture will not disappear, just because it would save our lives.

The irony, is that you my lover and ever the good son, will not oppose her preference, to admit that you love a Memsahib, even if she is me.

That she the good mother, only prays for your happiness! and yet in forbidding our love,

She loses the chance to open her mind, to know me, and that she in her ignorance, cannot understand that she is breaking you/r/our heart.

I can only project the serenity that you need from me.

I can only pretend...
and go back once again to being your beloved best friend,
that I wont die inside,
when you do inevitably find,
your 'decent' Indian bride.

If you could only find the courage,
she would realize that her child loves and is doubly loved in return,
and how we take care of each other.

maybe then? she would let me through...
Not seeing my skin,
but a love that is true.
Three wills that are strong,
Two lives that are tempered with longing.

one mind tortured with the sadness of knowing
that if she cannot give us our love and life together,
and with her blessing,
her child will dutifully and obediently endure in silence,

to secure his mother's happiness.

unknown to the woman whom i respect
I will duly and fearfully remain.
Only to remember how I was once truly loved.