Attention Poem by Shruti Goswami

We all love attention
Every bit of it
Lap it up
Like hungry, greedy
Humans
Who haven't fed
In a long time.
All the attention
And all those
That we did not get
Desperate
We seek, run after
Lie and feign
For that little bit of attention.
And then
And then
Suddenly we wake up
One fine morning
We see
All the attention
That surrounded
Has fled
To a different world
Of fantasy.
We are just left
With a handful of regret
Never thought
The span would be so less.
Dejected, feeling rejected
We seek hither and thither
But age plays the devil
Refusing to give us
More than what is due.
We are then
Left with some few old friends
Who do not attend
No, they don't
Yet during that hour of need
When you are beyond
Lust and greed
Just grief engulfs
They are the ones
Standing by your side
You realize
All this while
You had been grieving
For all the wrong reasons
And all the wrong people.
Attention is not what you seek.