A love that never was

by Amita Jadhav
(Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India)

Blue-veined fingers drum a song-less tattoo
On the armrest of the chair that rocks incessantly
Her near senile mind reaches out for a distant memory…


“You are my first, my last, my everything!”
Words stolen from a forgotten love-song
With these you professed to love me to the end
You sounded so honest and sincere then.

But your poems of undying love
Were in the end just empty promises
When you left me suddenly to marry another
You broke my faith, my heart into myriad pieces.

Every day I recall that fateful song of love
And glean the lines you would to me sing
Wishing that you had truly meant when you said
‘You are my first, my last, my everything!’


… She contemplates what was and what might have been
Rather a failed trust than a marriage - her mind lucidly states;
The chair stops its endless rocking, a jilted heart finally at rest.