Look at our Love laying in the coffin,
We could have saved him from dying.
How old was he? One year plus?
A little less than two years?
Let me count his age on my fingers,
He was merely one year
Four months and three days old;
He was as innocent as a cherub.

He did not die in a minute or in an hour;
He went into a coma on a fine December day
When you said, leave me alone,
I don't want to stay with you anymore.

I ran to you on my wobbly legs,
I ran from my office
To catch the bus,
I ran to catch the train,
I ran after you holding
Our malnourished Love in my heart.
I was on my knees,
Crying, begging.
I begged for the food
To feed our malnourished Love.
I begged for some water,
I was miserably trying to revive
Our malnourished Love,
Our first Love,
My first Love.

And

You drove our one-year-old child away,
You treated him like an outcast,
You were afraid of scandal,
As they would like to call it
'Love-jihad'.
In front of you I was desperately
Trying to catch my breath,
Trying to breathe into him
Some oxygen.
But I was helpless.
He needed both his parents,
And I was all alone.

I wish I was aware of
The imposed identity
That I was born into;
I wish he was aware of
Class, caste, religion,
And all other invisible barb wires.
But he was my child
And he was as dumb as me.

I conceived him
When I first saw you
Sitting on a red chair
In our departmental room;
You were chatting
With your newfound classmates.

I reared him up
In my heart not for nine months
but for two long years
Before I gave him to you.

We could have saved him together.
You could have saved him with a phone call
Or just a text would have been sufficient.

But

He is long dead now.

I hope you have enjoyed
Watching his rigor mortis.

Perhaps it's better that
He is dead now,
He was a threat to your society.
The brute is exterminated,
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.