Love

I wrote this poem in memory of my grandpa who passed away in the summer of 2020. The cause wasn’t Covid, as most might expect, it was hemorrhage. But the hurt was the same nevertheless. He was at the crux of all my fondest childhood memories at home. He was my favorite person. This poem deals with my struggle in coming to terms with what my love for him meant both before & after his death.

A lone cloud shadows the moon,

its shape not easy to make out.

It drifts slowly in the summer breeze.

It reminds me of you.

And I think maybe love is not

heart-shaped after all.

It is the shape of a cloud. Everchanging.

One day, it’s the shape of a man, of wrinkles,

words, & love for white bedsheets.

Another day, love is only a memory

difficult to hold on to, like a helium balloon.

Its color not red, but that of an old kurta.

Its shape an array of objects

shimmied from a steel almirah.

Mostly it’s a child’s drawing of a heart.

Irregular, odd, a looping edge here,

a flat side there… Not pretty

but tolerable… Sometimes,

impossible to comprehend

but for the fact that it feels more

like it and less like anything else.