An illusion of love

A Poem by Varsha

I walk beside her,
Her unflattering smile ringing caution through my body,
Her unmade hair delicately unfolding on her neck,
Her unsophisticated clothes pleasing my eyes,
Her gauche walk composed to the melody in my head,
Her knotty eyes catch mine,
And then something changed.

She lingers for a moment in the limbo we share,
A longing captured in her half stretched hands,
Each heavy breath, every unspoken word,
Unravels a story I might want to hear,
But her smoked brown lips stutter for a moment,
Ambiguity breaks the silence in her eyes,
And then something changed.

The incessant peers of those handsome guys,
‘He’ is my ambiguity,
The numerous blushing smiles I reward them,
That is my uncertainty,
The heights of dizzying tranquility they leave me with,
That is my vacillation,
Her quivering hands reach out to her eyes,
And then something changed.

‘He’ was her pain, ‘him’- her enemy,
‘He’ had robbed her childhood in an inconsiderate moment,
‘His’ selfishness, the cause for her perpetual angst,
The agony consuming her was ‘his’ forgotten face,
And the tormented nights ‘he’ gifted her were nightmares,
But that Monday morning she saw me for the first time,
And then something changed.

Now ‘I’ was her anguish, her tormenting nights,
‘He’ was pain but ‘I’ was a chronic sadness,
An interminable ‘illness’ as ‘they’ called it,
‘I’ was an unremitting reminder of everything her life was,
‘I’ was the inexorable truth the world chose to ignore,
That very moment the truth escaped her lips,
And then something changed.

Weighing on my shoulders, an illusion of love,
A love that shall bear a child,
A love that belongs to ‘him’ and ‘her’,
A love tied within the frontiers of solely two souls,
A love sweet on the eye, but bitter in its fairness,
A love so blinding, so unwavering, so deluding.
Was it strange then, that I had been out of love for so long?

She seems Normal. Ordinary.
Her features blunt, far from pretty, yet beautifully deep.
My eyes shut, I see a person misunderstood, misinterpreted,
A person insecure, unrealized,
Someone like me, away from the crowd, broken from inside,
Someone I could love.
My eyes open, I see her.

Love. An illusion. A construction.
Unaware that I see ‘her’ like I see ‘him’.
Love. Repulsive. Revolting.
Everything Ugly, Illicit, Frivolous and Despicable.
Love. No more a game. No need to pick sides.
Less of a decision and more of a choice.
Love. A paradise of sexes sans gender.
But I missed the paradise, didn’t I?