You asked for a reason to live, I said I can’t give it to you, I am not that. You asked for a reason to suffer, I never wanted to be that because all I ever knew was kindness. You asked for space in my heart, my heart wasn’t full, yet I couldn’t lend any space to you. You told me about your homelessness and I was unaffected. I could say I am sorry but I am not.

I don’t have feelings for you. Neutral I am like a blank sheet.  You aren’t the poem I would fall for; you aren’t the sound of a sonnet that lulls me into love. We aren’t my rhythm or even a stanza I like, though long or short they may be—they have to reach me and that wasn’t you. You keep on asking for compassion but I can’t love everyone and I certainly cannot love you anymore. My love is long gone, drained from me. You insisted to stay, I couldn’t say NO. A big fat no. but you weren’t welcomed either. You were scared of lonely arms. I was too. But the other half of me just wasn’t you.

Tonight you are a piece of paper I decided to throw away; the words scribbled in it are worthless. For they aren’t art, they are the story on how I cried at the lonely nights or how I got happy after a scary flight, just when I think, life is about to end, it begins.  How paranoid I am, the hunger for love that I have is not for you. I am not feeling less but I just don’t have some for you. You asked for a shoulder to cry and rest upon, mine just aren’t the ones. Don’t expect anything in return because from you I ask none. I will, one day, be old enough to realise how I let you slip away, it will come back to me like a stroke I never wanted—a sudden blindness I am expecting to strike me someday.  That day I might miss you because I see myself when I see you. I might be too afraid to see the truth, but tonight it is just not you. Sorry.

You ask me if you could leave, I don’t want you to leave, because you are a piece of art like all others, you are art that we strive for, live for. Art that is life.  Life that you are but just not for me. Tonight the papers aren’t going to be filled with you; ink from my pen won’t be spent on you. Tonight, I am writing a poem and I am letting you go.

Subedi is a student at St Xavier’s College.