bhaskar saikia

Poetry has always been a refuge for emotions too complex for simple explanation. In writing my poem, O My Heart!, I found myself reflecting on my own encounters with loss. Perhaps, in some way, we all carry the weight of an unseen sorrow—one that shapes us, but does not define us.

O MY HEART!

What is more tragic,
This sleeping angel on her father’s lap,
Who has lost her mother?
Or this father, whose wife has left?

Cold summer breeze touching
The golden locks of hair,
Covering the face of this angel.
Is she dreaming of her mother…?

A little creature, too young to have lost a mother…
Does she know what life has snatched
From her?
Or is she too innocent to know?

O my heart,
Why are you sad?
Life is tough;
You are not an exception.
What has life taken away from you?
Nothing!
Life is not cruel to you, O my heart,
Just that you have been broken
And ripped apart many a time.
But what have you lost?
Nothing!
Why then, O my heart, are you crying?

Loss often reveals itself in the quietest moments. It lingers in the spaces left behind, in the golden locks of a sleeping child, in the weary sigh of a father who has known both love and its absence. My poem is an exploration of this silence—the unspoken grief of those left behind and the quiet dialogue we have with our own hearts.

“Why are you sad?” is a question we often ask ourselves in moments of despair. Life, after all, is relentless in its trials. Are we truly mourning a loss, or are we simply feeling the echoes of past wounds reopening? The heart, broken and mended countless times, still aches. But what, truly, has been lost?

Grief is universal, yet deeply personal. This poem does not seek to measure one loss against another. Instead, it invites the reader to sit with their sorrow, to acknowledge its presence, and to question its weight. Sometimes, the heart grieves not for what has been taken, but for all that it has endured.

I wrote this poem in 2012, inspired by a father and his young daughter, who were my fellow passengers. The encounter was both beautiful and deeply moving, leaving a lasting impression on me. Sometimes, such fleeting moments stay with us forever, shaping our thoughts and creativity in unexpected ways.