Lament

28.5x20.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)

‘If you love me,’ you said,
‘You will want me for me!’
‘If I love you,’ I said,
‘You will love me for me!’

What remained unsaid
Were the threads unseen
Which sew the wounds,
Built the bridges,
Webbed the blanket
Shielding me from me,
You from you
Lost on the way
Trying to keep alive
A myth called ‘We’.

‘You are no more,’ you lament
‘The one I knew and loved!’
‘I am no more,’ I admit
‘Me!’

- Rudra Kishore Mandal