This is a poem about Unloving...

This is a poem not about loving

But about Unloving

How does someone unlove?

Have you given this a thought?

Do you unlove someone when they are

Alive or Dead?

Do we unlove someone 
thinking about unloving them everyday?

Or

Do we unlove someone

slowly, peeling layer after layer of memories?

Or

Do we unlove someone,

in the spur-of-the-moment,

like how we fell in love

Maa told me every day

How she loved  my father

In the manner, he took care of us

In the manner, he saved and secured us

In the manner he behaves in public

She told me this a million times

Sometimes, I felt it was a verbal affirmation to herself.

Sometimes, when she thought I didn't notice

I noticed how she half-heartedly smiled at his jokes

Gave him the attention of the hour

Without feeling it in her bones

Put him on a pedestal

And worshipped him every day

with her eyes closed

Whom did she see with her eyes closed?

Only she could answer

Or she couldn't 

I wonder 

How was I born?

Was there intimate, passionate, wild sex

Or did she just lay and was done in a couple minutes?

These just come up

When I try to find a partner,

Would I be like Maa?

Or would I dive in head first in the pool of love

never to unlove him

I knew precisely when I unloved

I looked up to him till the end of the world

seemed minuscule

Till I felt like a speck of the dust

in his presence

Till I felt in my bones

That he doesn't seem to have only me in his life

But someone else too.