Poem: Drowning in your eyes, but tears aren’t water.

Another Sunday comes and goes—another exchange of poetry between me and the prolific Priya Patel. I wonder why we cannot do this more.

In fact, we should. Some things are simple, but when we dip them into our hearts, they take on such intensity that they warrant a poetry exchange.

Here we go. My first poem explores how the smitten poet drowns in his lover’s eyes, immersing himself in bliss, impervious to her angry words.

Poem: Drowning in your eyes

Just seeing me in your eyes
Tinted by your anger
I drowned in that pool
For I lost my breath
Now a state of eternal bliss
Time did not make sense
Nor did your scathing words
Amplifying my mistakes
For I know my fault lines
But it is through those cracks
Your light entered inside me
Illuminating my dark self
I bask in your warmth
And drown in your sight
Heedless to the worldly words
For just in your presence
I discovered my heaven
- Ashok Subramanian

Priya responded with her favorite part — the breath. The angry lover’s pokes and jabs are how they fight and makeup.

Poem: In your breath, there is me

We bathe in each other’s words;
sugary sweet nothings
whispered soft in each others ears
when everything is ok
In the happiest of moments,
there is not much to say,
for we exist in each other’s breath
But words have a way of twisting
and your poetic verses
turn into taunts and tiny stabs
designed to hurt my existance;
a verbal war where no one keeps tabs
but all we are left with is tears
You do that sometimes,
lash out your mounting stresses,
take away all emotional caresses
and instead of existing
in each other’s breaths,
you suddenly take mine away
It’s OK….
Together, we are so much more
than the tender caresses;
more than the sweet nothings
whispered in moments of bliss,
we are the tiny stabs
and barbed words
and the make-up moments
each time we kiss
We are forever in each other’s breaths

~ © Priya May, 7, 23

I towed her line, agreeing that the fights and makeups were all part of the lover’s regular day in their paradise.

Poem: Tears aren’t water

The hard stares, pokes and barbs
carry their meaning
Like how tears aren’t water
But salty waters of emotions
Straight from our hearts
That are homes to our love
the daily chores of romance
the sweet and spice of such life
the fights and the fracas
the fun and the fantasies
the magic of making up
more meaning to the mundane
those little things that matter
as involuntary as our breaths
for we are forever
in each other’s breaths.
- Ashok Subramanian

There was no more fun when we agreed that the lovers ‘were forever in each other’s breaths.’

~Ashok Subramanian, Priya Patel © 2023