Maybe forgetting is first, and death comes second—the world is only so,
because we gave it meaning by connecting the fragments,
by giving beautiful names to sad things, if your mother was to
give you a new name, what would it be?
How convenient would it be to bridge the relentlessness of memory
with acceptance—I can take comfort in knowing that you happened,
without likening you to ephemera, to placate myself and keep
bay the tides of your absence. Where are you?
In all the shades of blues, and yellows.
I have spent my life, cradling gentle anger in concealed fists, on the tip of my tongue,
dissipating it slowly in deep breaths, because all my life I’ve grown accustomed to
remembering you, even before meeting you. It’s a side-stitch, I feel with every step.
And being motionless is another form of drowning, the tides of you are constantly
inching towards me every second of the day.
Moment of mourning stretch into the horizon, it quietly becomes hours,
then days, then months, then years, a lifetime and it all loses itself
in one breath—that is to say, you haven’t forgotten but
find yourself thinking less and less of the pain
each day, until the pain is dead and
so are you.
