Love In The Age Of Deception: A Poem By Kawsar Ahamed Poem by Kawsar Ahamed

Love in the Age of Deception
A poem about modern love, broken promises, and the death of sincerity

By Kawsar Ahamed

Love was once a sacred flame,
A beating heart, a whispered name.
A shelter where the wounded healed,
A quiet truth that needed no shield.

Love was a promise, a bond, a prayer,
The feeling of knowing someone would care.
It was not wealth, nor beauty, nor fame,
But choosing a soul beyond its name.


But look at love in the world today—
How its colors fade and its meanings decay.
What once was sacred has become contaminated,
Its deepest promises manipulated.

Lovers have become cheaters,
Romantic poets turned into deceivers.
They speak of forever with convincing eyes,
Then leave you alone with a thousand lies.

They enter your life like a beautiful dream,
Making you believe in a love supreme.
They learn every weakness, every scar, every fear,
Then become the very reason you no longer feel safe near.

Some arrive with flowers, some arrive with lies,
Some build you a heaven beneath midnight skies.
But once they have taken whatever they came for,
They leave you in ruins and search for more.

Love has become a marketplace,
Where human hearts are products on display.
Everyone asks what the other can offer,
But few ask what they can give away.


What can you provide? How much do you earn?
What gifts can you buy? What favors return?
Does your beauty impress? Does your status shine?
Can you make my life better while I make yours mine?

Affection has prices, and loyalty has fees,
Commitment comes with conditions and pleas.
Some trade their bodies, some trade their names,
Some sell their sincerity for temporary gains.

Money becomes love, and love becomes business,
Desire becomes currency, and trust becomes weakness.
They measure devotion by what they receive,
Then wonder why no one has the courage to believe.

In the age of dating apps, a face is a choice,
A profile, a picture, a carefully edited voice.
Swipe left on a flaw, swipe right on desire,
Replace a real connection when the feelings expire.

Thousands of faces, a thousand possibilities,
Yet loneliness grows behind digital realities.
We have endless connections at the tips of our hands,
But struggle to find someone who genuinely understands.


We match in seconds, we promise in days,
We call it forever, then vanish in a haze.
A conversation ends without a goodbye,
And someone who felt like home becomes a stranger passing by.

Ghosting has replaced the courage to speak,
And silence has become the language of the weak.
They leave you questioning everything you knew,
Wondering what was real and what was never true.

Situationships flourish in the shadows of doubt,
Where nobody commits, yet nobody walks out.
They want your attention, your body, your care,
But disappear when responsibility is there.

They want all the privileges of having your heart,
Without the honest commitment that holds it together.
They want you available whenever they need,
But call you demanding when you ask them to be clear.

Some say, "I'm not ready for anything serious, "
Yet keep you close enough to satisfy their loneliness.
They offer you affection, but never a place,
Leaving you trapped in an undefined space.


And then there are lovers who live double lives,
With innocent partners and secret goodbyes.
They promise one person the moon and the stars,
While another collects the pieces of their scars.

They keep backup lovers for the days they feel alone,
Building temporary shelters instead of a home.
They fear being single more than being untrue,
So they keep someone waiting while searching for someone new.

Love bombing begins with a beautiful lie,
Endless affection beneath a glittering sky.
You're their soulmate, their destiny, their one and only—
Until the attention disappears, and you're left feeling lonely.

They praise you, pursue you, make you their world,
Then withdraw their affection and leave you unfurled.
One day you're everything; the next, you're a burden,
And you're left asking questions that receive no answer.

Some lovers become devils wearing angelic faces,
Turning safe, loving homes into frightening places.
They use your forgiveness to test your boundary,
Then call it love when it is really control and cruelty.


They learn how to hurt you without leaving a mark,
How to silence your voice and extinguish your spark.
They turn your own kindness against your soul,
Then blame you for breaking when they made you feel whole.

Lovers can become cruel, and love can inspire war;
History has witnessed what jealousy can do.
Families have fractured, and lives have been lost,
When possession is mistaken for love at any cost.

But love itself is not the villain we see;
It is the hunger to own someone who longs to be free.
It is control dressed in the language of care,
It is violence disguised as a promise to be there.

And what about social media, the theatre of romance,
Where couples perform happiness and give perfection a chance?
They post roses, anniversaries, kisses, and smiles,
While hiding their heartbreak behind carefully chosen styles.

Their photographs sparkle, their captions sound sweet,
But behind closed doors, two lonely souls may never meet.
The world sees a fairytale, a love without end,
While one cries in silence and pretends to be a friend.


Valentine's roses, expensive displays,
Grand public gestures and picture-perfect days—
Yet what is a bouquet when respect is denied?
What good is a diamond when the truth must hide?

A thousand-dollar gift cannot purchase devotion,
Nor expensive vacations create genuine emotion.
A beautiful dinner cannot teach someone to care,
And a thousand "I love yous" mean nothing without being there.

Love is not a subscription you cancel when bored,
Nor a contract where feelings are measured and scored.
It is not a transaction, a bargain, a prize,
Nor a beautiful performance built entirely on lies.

Yet some people still treat lovers like things,
Like disposable flowers that bloom and lose their wings.
They take what they want, then move on to the next,
Leaving behind broken hearts and unanswered texts.

And the cruelest betrayal is not always goodbye,
But discovering the person who made you feel alive
Was never the person you thought you had known—
Just a beautiful stranger who borrowed your soul.

You question your worth, your judgment, your mind,
Searching for the warning signs you failed to find.
You wonder if loyalty was foolish or blind,
If honesty is a weakness in this modern design.

You begin to distrust the hands that reach near,
You mistake genuine affection for something to fear.
You build walls around the heart that once believed,
And punish the next person for the wounds you received.

This is how deception spreads through the years:
One broken heart creates another's fears.
One person betrays, another learns to pretend,
And the cycle continues without a clear end.

Some turn their pain into revenge and spite,
Some chase temporary pleasures to survive the night.
Some hurt others because they themselves were hurt,
Planting new roses in contaminated dirt.

But pain is no permission to destroy another,
And betrayal is no reason to become what hurt you.
Your wounds may explain why your heart became guarded,
But they cannot excuse every cruel thing you do.

So where is true love in this modern age?
Is it a forgotten poem on a forgotten page?
Is it a distant moon beyond humanity's reach,
A beautiful truth that we can no longer teach?

Finding genuine love feels like touching the moon,
Like finding a flower that blooms out of season too soon.
You search through the crowds, through the noise and disguise,
But struggle to find honesty in familiar eyes.

Perhaps true love is rare, but it isn't extinct;
Perhaps it still lives beyond the opinions we think.
Perhaps somewhere, someone still knows how to stay,
To choose honesty even when running away seems easy.

Someone who sees your humanity before your income,
Who values your presence beyond what you become.
Someone who doesn't count every favor you give,
Who makes room for your flaws and allows you to live.

Someone who speaks when the truth becomes hard,
Who protects your dignity and respects your guard.
Someone who chooses commitment without losing their freedom,
Who understands that real love requires both people to mean it.

Someone who doesn't need an audience to show they care,
Who keeps their promises when nobody is there.
Someone who knows that loyalty is not a chain,
And that loving a person means respecting their pain.

Because real love is not perfect, nor free from mistakes;
It is the truth that remains when the illusion breaks.
It is accountability, respect, and the courage to grow,
Not the fear of abandonment that refuses to let go.

Love should heal, not humiliate.
Love should build, not devastate.
Love should offer peace, not constant fear,
And never make you beg for the right to be here.

So let us question the world that we have made,
Where tenderness is traded and sincerity can fade.
Where hearts are treated as temporary possessions,
And loneliness hides behind countless connections.

Let us stop calling possession devotion,
Stop calling manipulation emotion.
Stop calling jealousy proof that someone cares,
And stop confusing empty promises with prayers.

Let us stop glorifying suffering as romance,
Stop mistaking obsession for a second chance.
Not every intense feeling is a love that is true,
And not everyone who wants you knows how to value you.

For love is not proven by how much you cry,
Nor by how many times you forgive a cruel lie.
It is not measured by how long you endure,
But by whether the bond is respectful and secure.

And if modern love has become a market of lies,
Let honesty be the rebellion that survives.
Let loyalty mean something beyond words on a screen,
Let kindness return to the spaces between.

Perhaps love has not died; perhaps we have changed,
Turned something profound into something exchanged.
Perhaps the tragedy is not that love disappeared,
But that we learned to fear the very thing we once held dear.

Still, I refuse to believe that every heart is corrupt,
That every sincere promise must eventually erupt.
For even in darkness, a small light can remain,
And not every goodbye must end in pain.

I will not call every lover a liar or a thief,
Nor let every betrayal become my belief.
But I will no longer confuse sweet words with the truth,
Or sacrifice my peace for the illusion of youth.

Let love return to its sacred beginning,
Where nobody needs to lose for another to be winning.
Where two people stand as equals, not buyer and prize,
And neither must become smaller for the other to rise.

Let love be a choice, not a financial arrangement;
Let trust be the foundation, not a temporary engagement.
Let two human beings be honest and free,
Without turning affection into a debt to be paid.

For in a world full of scammers, deceivers, and games,
The greatest rebellion is to love without shame—
Not blindly, not desperately, not at the cost of your soul,
But with honesty and boundaries that keep both people whole.

Love is real. Love can be eternal.
But not every romance is sacred or true.
Some people will break what they never deserved,
And some will discover what love can still do.

And perhaps, when the noise of this world finally ceases,
When greed loses power and the heart finds its peace,
We will learn that the rarest treasure was never a face—

It was a faithful heart
In a world that put a price on love.

And until that day, I leave you this truth:

Do not search for someone who promises you the moon.
Search for someone who will tell you the truth beneath it.

Because the moon may be distant,
The stars may disappear,
But a love built on truth
Will never need deception to keep you near.