Unromantic

This is not a love story.

There are no moons, no roses,

No shy glances across a room,

No rain-drenched silences blooming into kisses.

This poem is purely unromantic,

There are no promises whispered in the dark,

No full-moon nights to dream about,

No softly spoken “I love you.”

No lover waits beneath your balcony,

No one gets drenched without an umbrella,

The umbrella stays dry and sensible—

Because catching a cold means missing work.

No flowers ordered on Valentine’s Day,

No heart-shaped chocolates,

Just a notification on your phone—

“Delivery charge applied.”

A date night isn’t moonlight and candle wax anymore,

It’s checking restaurant reviews on Google,

Snapping photos of your plate,

And searching for a clever caption on Instagram.

Love now lives in the calendar,

Messages are seen but replies are delayed,

There are no emojis of hearts,

Only Zoom meeting links sent in haste.

Instead of morning songs,

You wake up to deadlines and alerts,

Evening walks hand in hand

Get drowned in traffic and honking horns.

In this poem, lovers don’t read Neruda together,

They read emails, check spam folders,

And review client feedback

More than each other’s moods.

Perfume has been replaced

By the ever-lingering smell of sanitizer,

Touches aren’t soft or lingering—

Just taps on a phone screen.

And yet, in this unromantic life,

Is love truly gone?

Maybe not—it just looks different now,

Quieter, subtler, but just as real.

When you make them a cup of tea

While rushing through the morning mess,

When you look at their tired face and say,

“Try to get to bed early tonight”—

That is love.

Even without roses, care wraps around the words.

Even without saying “I love you,”

There are a thousand unspoken affirmations.

When their name pops into your head

Between back-to-back meetings,

When a song makes you laugh

And you remember their face—

That’s love surviving the chaos.

This poem doesn’t shout declarations,

It doesn’t light candles or recite sonnets,

It simply asks,

“Did you take your medicine today?”

And that—

That’s a kind of love too.

Where kisses are replaced by quiet concern,

And instead of dates,

You share silence side by side, without pressure.

Unromantic?

Maybe.

But never unloved.

Even in the noise of this weary world,

Love lives—simple, ordinary, real.