Deepening Sadness

[atiguhya padma]

This is a kind of apology, for someone who will never see it, a way of going through a process of embedding one's sorrow. It is an easy way out. It is selfish.

I wish to be alone now
To lose myself in this growing mood
Of dripping melancholy
But, even now, that would also be
A terrible indulgence
A reproduction of selfishness
Your sadness has become mine
A different kind, admittedly,
An evolving mutation.
But I was the guilty carrier
The source of the infection
Now this burden of sadness is ours.
I did not see, I hurt you
And in this darkness I am become
Anaesthetised, unwanted,
Blind and isolated. Was it not
The Dean of St Paul’s, John Donne,
That once said No man is an island?
How is it I could not see?
This debilitating sorrow forms
A malignant life around us,
That fills me with mind-paralysis.
I stand upon the shoreline
Hoping, staring at the crashing waves.

[amuse]

were you the source of a friend's unrequited love?
*shuts up if that's too personal a question

[atiguhya padma]

Amuse,

No it wasn't that. It was a mixture of things. I'm not sure I want to go into much detail, but it had everything to do with my behaviour and not being able to see what that was doing to a cherished friend. It is a situation where saying anything would cause more pain and saying nothing makes you feel uncaring. So I thought I would write this poem. I am saying something and yet because she will not see it, I am saying nothing. In a strange kind of way, that makes me feel better.

AP.

[amuse]

In a strange kind of way, that makes me feel better.i'm glad to hear that, AP.