What has love done to you mother?
Look at your yellow- stained palms,
Wrinkled with the lines of the past,
Belly scarred by days of endless fast.
Skin infested with timeless endurance
Frail Voice aching for love’s assurance
Dull eyes weary of bearing dreams,
Cheeks moist with salty streams.
Why don’t you paint your nails?
Why don’t you dress in red?
Why don’t you look in the mirror?
Look mother! Look –
Look what love has done to you!
Perhaps you were disillusioned,
Blind behind the white veil.
Love is to be felt mother,
Not to be forced upon.
The love that I have witnessed
Is nothing like the love,
That you were served, mother.
Love is wild and free,
It doesn’t domesticate you.
Perhaps you were illiterate
To even identify a love, true.
Mother, I wished and I still do
That you could afford hate too.
I wish that I could teach you love,
How pure and divine it feels.
I wish I could teach you to live,
The life with a love that heals.
Look what your love has done-
Even lying in your deathbed stern,
Your body reeks of restlessness,
Craving the love of its share in return.
Poetry from The Hemlock Issue 6, Winter 2024
About the Author:
Krisht Saikia hails from India. He especially writes about his raw emotions that he finds difficult to express in front of others. His writings are the reflections of the various forms of himself that exist within him. He usually focuses upon the feelings that are lost in the void, frequently ignored and abandoned. It is his poetry that makes him feel alive and honest. Instagram: @_obscure__poet
The Hemlock Journal 
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