Aesop's River

I try to picture the night you left home.
Was the hall undisturbed as the door sat ajar,
Or did your caterwaul linger and rupture the walls?
I can’t seem to remember. What color was your scarf?
No matter- I didn’t get to say goodbye.

I’ll miss your tired, freckled hands—
How they’d thread through your hair while you wrote.
I remember an air of arrogant grace.
The more I ponder, you hated that scarf.
You’d say it was tacky, scratchy & bland.

I kept all your stories; I don’t read them anymore-
Superfluous nothings.. euphemistic artifice.
You hid your frailties within languorous prose.
I don’t understand; why did you wear it?
It was all I could see as you whisked out the door.

I’d like to believe that I knew you best-
A key-master to your hyperbolic narrative.
But, just like the others, I too lost my way.
I can almost recall—the scarf, it was yellow?
No, it couldn’t be. You never wore yellow.

I may be ambivalent, but how could I not?
You absconded with furious yet helpless resolve.
A virtuoso of oeuvre yet a fool to the heart.
I still visit the river where they found your scarf-
Cruel is the totem so fated that day.