ABOUT THE POEM: This poem operates as a palimpsest in both form and intent. It is not merely a lyric expression of love or loss; it is a layered document in which emotion, memory, refusal, and annotation coexist without hierarchy. The poem does not attempt to resolve its tension or offer consolation. Instead, it records what remains when resolution never arrives. At its core, the work examines unreciprocated love as a lived condition rather than a romantic tragedy. Love here is not idealized or aestheticized; it is treated as a demand made in isolation, a unilateral act that continues despite the absence of return. The repeated plea-“Give me love”-is not poetic flourish but structural insistence. It exposes the asymmetry of desire and the exhaustion that follows sustained waiting. The opening questions-what does one do when nothing saves you-establish an existential frame. Survival is not guaranteed by meaning, faith, or hope. What follows is not a search for answers but a catalog of persistence. The poem accepts that probability may be zero while possibility still exists, a logic that mirrors the emotional state of waiting for someone who has already refused. The inclusion of multilingual texture grounds the poem culturally and emotionally, emphasizing isolation within a shared world. The translation placed directly beneath the original line reinforces the poem’s documentary quality: nothing is hidden, nothing romanticized. Meaning is exposed, not embellished. A decisive transformation occurs with the inclusion of “Sing - 07 Feb 2005.” The poem becomes temporal. It acquires a date, a historical anchor. The “song” section is intentionally excessive, repetitive, and pleading-qualities often edited out of polished poetry. Here, they are preserved to show how love actually sounds when it is not reciprocated. The repetition is not aesthetic failure; it is psychological accuracy. The final parenthetical annotations function as forensic evidence. They negate the song, cross it out, contextualize it, and finally authenticate it. These notes refuse metaphor and deny interpretation. They insist that the poem is not imagination but residue. By stating what happened-who refused, who returned, what object came back-the poem shifts from lyric to archive. Feeling becomes fact. As a standalone piece, this work resists categorization. It is not a plea, not a diary, not a love poem in the traditional sense. It is a record of attachment that did not resolve, preserved without apology. Its power lies in its refusal to edit itself into dignity. The crossed-out text remains visible. The waiting is not redeemed. The love is not answered.Palimpsest Poem
If nothing saves you,
what do you still do?
What does one do?
What do you do?
And then what do I do?
Sab kha pee ke so gaye,
humein nashe ho gaye.
Everyone ate, drank, and fell asleep;
I was left intoxicated.
There can be zero probability
of something happening,
and yet
there can still be a possibility
that it might.
Even unconditional love
has one condition:
there must be someone
to receive it.
A diamond and infinity
share one truth:
both are forever.
And there is one thing
I need from you.
I want it.
You have to give it-
if you have it.
If you do,
let yourself give it to me.
Give me love-
a possibility without conditions,
forever.
You have met me before.
I know you remember.
We have made love before-
I know you felt it.
And yet a distance remains.
Why must only I cross it,
and cross it alone?
I have found nothing on the way
except the journey itself.
I know how to stand
like a rock at your command.
I know how to melt
when you vanish from sight-
to wander searching,
empty without your hand in mine.
No stars in my sky.
No green or blue in my day.
I walk in the dark
with eyes open,
feeling the hopeless
thump-thump
inside this cage of flesh.
If the world demanded
you silence your tweet-tweet,
would you cease being a woman
and let them stare,
encroach upon your innocence?
Do not withdraw
what you never gave,
just because the world
might question us.
Do not punish me
for what the world did to you,
or for what they might say
about me.
There is a storm in my life.
My boat-
my will to survive
without seeing you,
without knowing where you are-
is sinking
in noisy silence
day by day.
All I ask
is that you give me
the love I give you.
Remember:
I am loving you here,
alone.
Give me love.
Sing,
sing for me.
I am waiting for you.
It doesn’t rain now;
everything feels choked
in my heart.
If it’s only zero,
what’s left for me?
Sing,
sing for me.
I don’t have you,
but I belong to you.
Sing,
sing for me-
I want my share of love.
Where is the love for me?
Come on-come and love me.
Please love me.
Sing,
sing for me.
Tell me my mistake-
was it only that I fell in love
with you?
Sing,
sing for me.
In this loneliness around me,
to whom shall I say,
“I am waiting for you,
I am waiting for you”?
Sing,
sing for me.
Give me
whatever you might have spared
for someone else-
the love I cry for in fear
that I will remain here forever,
waiting,
just waiting.
Oh sing,
sing for me.
I am waiting-
only for you.
(On the yellow paper, all of this is crossed out.)
(I crossed the whole song after writing it-)
(to remind myself: this is not the way.)
(She will never understand anyway.)
(So don’t send it. Don’t write it.)
(When I asked her to be my girlfriend, she said no.)
(I told her, “Don’t talk to me now.”)
(After fifteen days, she returned the poem I had given her eight months earlier.)
(She said, “I had it.”)
(She was there in the same college, but didn’t show herself up, remained invisible, forever, I never saw her again except once she shouted from a bus-stand after two years out of nowhere-oye, why don’t you talk to me? And vanished again in the world forever.)
(Every word here is lived reality, not fantasy-
it carries the weight of what actually happened.)
(Here is one proof.)
