LETTER



When Daddy all through the country roamed,
I wrote letters to him, asking him to come home,
As a child in school I wrote to the teachers,
Asking them to stop giving home tasks and the torture,
Wrote at length to family and friends,
Keeping in touch and knowing all that was happening at their end,
Then came the days of a dreamy teenager,
Of colourful envelopes and bright letters,
Drawing out stories of love and many a heart break,
Of thumping hearts and strange heartaches,
Then I wrote many a letter to my kids,
Carrying words of a mother, anxious and worried, 
Gone are those feelings, gone are the letters,
All that remains are an empty nest, sheaves of paper and  no chatter,
Now I sit writing word after word and pages to myself,
Letters mocking the loneliness, sitting on the cold wooden shelf.

©Madhumita