Waiting : Dr Purnima Singh

Waiting 

Dr Purnima Singh 

You are good at vanishing acts,

disappearing between unfinished sentences

like smoke leaving a temple lamp.

I am good at waiting—

staying back after the crowd has left,

counting silence like prayer beads,

spending sleepless nights

imagining all the ways

our ending could arrive.

Sometimes I picture it gently:

two tired people

placing love down softly

like a book they can no longer carry.

Sometimes it ends like a storm—

words breaking against walls,

memories turning into sharp glass,

your footsteps fading

while I still listen for them.

And sometimes, in the cruelest version,

there is no ending at all—

just you vanishing slowly

and me waiting so long

that waiting itself

becomes my only companion.

(Dr Purnima Singh Assistant Professor of English in a Varanasi College is a poet and book reviewer. She is a researcher and nature lover. Her writings are published in India and abroad)