Agony of Love

Love had happened
When all you and I
Were capable of
Was gawking goofiness
Or worse
A bland affectation of
Aloofness.

And love had happened
At three minutes to three pm
On a sweaty summer day.

My skirts getting shorter
Hemlines ripped over torn barbed wire
Scaling forbidden fences
Love happened to us
Prismatic ally
Glinting from your comically
Framed lenses.

I was Alice
Fresh and alive
Through your  looking glasses
Dauntlessly flaunting my
Die hard innocence.

Love happened like water quenching
Thirst
Like parched lips blessing kisses
Of iced lemonade.
Love happened like this or that
Charmed child
Of unplanned happiness.

These are the book bags of
Memories
In my little toy cupboard
Glistening white with crimson oak leaf
Trimmings.
I cannot enumerate joys
Of the flesh
That course through bone sap and
Wood sap
From the succulent vines
Of yesterday.

Now I have lost it
The command
The password
The safe key
To Neverland
I was Captain Hook
You a sylph a fairy
I have random captures
Eluding my grasp
My mind is
Lost and found
Lightning strikes
In  darkness
Silver music
In silences
Intense flashes
Sheltered in nonchalance.

I cannot lay claim
Love wasn't a framed
Declaration
It was a dabbling on
The walls
A rambling on walks
Not a commissioned
Portrait
But something stored in the attic
For another day.

Thank you for reminding
picture perfection lies
In the incomplete
The half said
Half deed,
In the emptied cup
Not the cloying mead.

Love is best served
As agony too
The  wistfulness
Of not remembering
But feeling the very bones
Of a skeletal framework
A stealthy stalking wraith
A walking romance
In a garden rarer than Eden
A beauty
That would now require
Insanity to recreate.

Hush.
Love happened.
At four o'clock in the
Evening.
Though you argued,
Like only you would,
If the sun was in the sky
It was only afternoon.

Your mother served us
Sprite in Nescafe mugs.
We drank it swankily
Like wine.

Afterwards,
We climbed the low guava tree
To disperse
Leaves of shed memories
For the rest of our lives.

And
I guess
in our minds,
We softly danced.

(c) Amrita Valan 2017