Did You Ever Love Me Book : Words That Heal the Broken Heart
Did You Ever Love Me Book
I’ve forgotten our fight the way I don’t remember what I had for breakfast. But it’s safe to say the things said by someone you love are far more consequential than a meal. The words of the people I love seep into my soul and settle inside, the way novels settle on shelves and their fictional characters settle in hearts.
Why don’t your words make me feel anything anymore?
Why does your voice not sound like your own? You’re a part of my life, but it’s as if someone deleted the space between ‘a part ‘ to make us fall ‘apart ‘, as if the two words fell in love with each other but ended up distancing us. Can you feel like you’ve lost someone while holding their hand?
Have you hurt me so much that my heart refuses to let your words stay? Is it because I’m used to your words, or because your words don’t matter to me anymore? Or because you don’t matter to me anymore?
Have you wounded me so deeply that my heart has closed itself to you, as a water lily closes itself when the night brings unbearable darkness? Is my indifference instinctive self-preservation?
Did You Ever Love Me Book : Words That Heal the Broken Heart
I tell you, I don’t love you anymore,
without looking at your face.
You tell me it breaks your heart
to see me in so much pain.
Hridyansh asked his naani,
Why do we pray
to so many gods?
She smiled and replied,
So that your prayers always
have a place to go.
So that they’re never returned
like a parcel because
nobody was home.
Years later,
he stood in the temple
and thought to himself,
Naani, did you lie?
Are my prayers paper planes
mistaking our roof for the sky?
Am I praying in a dialect
the gods don’t speak?
Are my prayers unimportant,
my faith too weak?
Your prayer books don’t
make sense to me, naani.
Please come back home.
I’m tired.
I’m tired of praying alone.
In your twenties, you’ll fall for someone who will love almost everyone more than they love you. You will still love them because you have not yet learned how to love, ever seen your parents and yourself. Because you’ve only named it love, even when it felt a lot like violence.
They’ll yawn during your replays of Dead Poets Society, laugh at your playlist full of Enrique songs, hate all your friends, neglect your feelings until you stop talking about them, and persistently speak of the people they’ve loved before they met you to make you wonder if they still love them while simultaneously reminding you that they’re capable of loving another person. And you’ll still think they’re your soulmate because your heart hasn’t fully broken yet.
You will play ‘All My Loving’ and slow-dance with them on the balcony. You will tell them that you love them, and they will tell you they’re scared of love. Petrified, in fact. It’ll take you years to learn that saying you’re scared of love is easier than telling someone you don’t love them.
Years later, you’ll see them with someone else, holding hands, smiling the way you smiled next to them. Still scared of love? You’ll ask them. And they’ll think to themselves, Not unless it’s unrequited.
Did You Ever Love Me Book: Poetry That Understands Your Pain
Give flowers to your men
so they’re as fluent in gentleness
as their mother tongue.
Don’t let them
remain strangers to
Anne Sexton says,
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So when our neighbour Rumani
was being married off
to her father’s friend,
everyone knew she wasn’t happy.
And everyone knew it didn’t matter.
In the ninth grade,
they pulled her out of school
after reading her notes
to Abhimanyu,
who didn’t even know
she wasn’t supposed
to love him.
Tumhari aankhein
badi tehzeeb se
niharti hai mujhe.
Kavitayein likhne ko kehti hai,