You

How I wish for you to be there,
At the end of day, with my dinner fare.
A comforting word after a day of stress,
A warm hand for mine to caress.

Putting your hand around my shoulder,
Knowing that together we could move any boulder.
You were there during my darkest hour,
You gave me strength, you gave me the power.

All I need is a listening ear,
To which I can pour out my troubles for you to hear.
It’s much better than to sit and mope,
Lying in wait for eternal hope.

You were my confidant, my humanoid diary,
To which I commented on anything, sly or savoury.
You were the spark plug when I lose my shine,
Also knowing when to kick me from behind.

You were the reason I troop off to academic hell each day,
With the knowledge I will see you along the way.
Lessons not learnt, tutorials not done,
I just had to see you before one.

You chose to enter my dark, mysterious world,
Filled with skeletons, angst and no pearls.
Why did you choose me over the rest?
You never could settle for nothing, save the best.

However, still you refuse to enter this dark abyss,
Nothing would make you compromise your wedded bliss.
Don’t you realise the folly of your ways?
Come now, ignore your carpeted enclave.

You never moved, never wavered,
Even as I feverishly laboured.
You never even existed at all,
Perhaps, my arrogance was my downfall.

Was this a dream that would cease to persist?

Ng Zhao Yang
9.56 p.m. 24/4/03

To “You”.

A little backstory to this poem. I was going home late that day, 24/4, and I felt very tired and messed up and I wanted to talk to someone about it, but sitting alone in the bus 77 on my way home I had no one to share my words with. Thus I speculated of this imaginary person who would talk to me about my troubles, but knowing the impossibility of that, thus the twist at the end. Hence the "you" in inverted commas.
Perhaps, one day, I could finally dispense with the inverted commas.