Counting Love

What do you do with so much love? He asked

I smiled and counted on my ten fingers

The first one is for my parents
They raised me to be a hell.of a daughter
And i wouldnt leave them, stranding ever

The second one is for my grandparents
Without whom nothing really made sense
When mom.scolded or i felt scared
I would walk to them
Their shadow was enough
To drive away the ghosts

The third one for my siblings
They are my rock
Althought, i am hit by the same.rock
And sometimes i want to throw one on them
Nevertheless, its endless love

The fourth for my extended family
My cousins, brothers in law
Who make my life a little better

The fifth one is for my friend
The one who.polished me
Nice and shiny
The one who peeled layers of insecurities and vulnerabilities
Chipping my dead self
Allowing me to glow from inside

The sixth one is for my husband
He technically made my life better
Of course, he isnt what i imagined him to be
But may be im not what he imagined me to be
So I leave it there,  accepting it is what it is

The seventh one is for my in-laws
Even toxicity needs love
My father in law - a gem of a person
Sometimes I wonder did we fail to understand him
My mother in law - a struggler
But i would also take.the liberty to say
A trauma survivor
And then the stories never end
My extended family
Who is a like a family
Nothing much to talk about

The eighth one
For my daughter
She never fails to.impress me
With all that she is vocal about
She believes in
Her thoughts,  her perception

The ninth for my son
The artist, the explorer
The inquisitive bundle of joy

The tenth for people
I meet in life
Giving them.smiles
Along the journey of life

He smiled and asked me
Where's love for yourself?
And i closed my fingers
To make it  a fist 

The Most Selfish

 You know of all the things in the Universe

Death is the most selfish

It snatches you ultimately to itself

Baring nothing to anyone

Just bits and pieces of memories

If you were lucky to love people

Else it cruelly digs its claws

Into every fiber of your being

Plucking all the beautiful things

from you

And the loss resonates

with everyone who is alive

and witness you going far away

Then they wish death upon themselves

But, you know the funny thing about Death

It doesn't come in pairs

It only picks one

and leave the rest to tumble and fall

in the abyss of loneliness

Marking a sense of absence

everywhere it smiles

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.