Kite Flyer Poem by Pradip Chattopadhyay

I wonder why I withheld it the story was overdue
Summers back I wrote for her from heart ‘I love you’

I see those days of careless time her face still girlish bright
A boy’s heart she took away left him some wakeful nights

Petals blew away with the wind that must have stolen her sight
The girl I knew once playmate she knew how to fly a kite

She frolicked around in a polka dot skirt a prancing butterfly
Babbled in joy clapped in glee as her string spread to the sky

I watched in awe her graceful hands way she pulled the string
Wrote her name many a time about love I knew nothing

A girl so cute so full of life so loving and carefree
I dipped my mind deep in her nothing else it could be

The daring girl I held in stare trapped my eyes like a star
Those afternoons would be cruelly void lifeless without her

Once alone on the wall of attic I inscribed it with my nail
No other way to relieve my mind couldn’t write her a mail

Those three words on the mossy wall for times there they stood
My heart’s outpour carved in bold if only they remained for good

Next afternoon at the rooftop to me she looked anew
My knees went weak I knew alone the mystery of ‘I love you’

None broke the lull as she pointed the wall her face red with rage
Her probing eyes rolled on the faces till they held me in their gaze

‘It cannot be you I’m sure I exclude you from suspicion’
If only she knew the little boy’s mind secrets of his emotion

A few years thence I went back to that house to see if it still was there
Those candid three words from a timid boy laying his child’s heart bare

The house was gone so was the roof in its place stood an apartment new
None would ever know the girl never knew I wrote her from heart ‘I love you’