TRAGEDY AND HOT CHOCOLATE
A cold January morning
Seven months from when you first told me
you loved me
I wake up
and I don't miss you
I don't miss the way we used to sound like
while we were on the phone, not talking,
just hearing each other's breath.
Nah, I don't miss your breath.
Seven months is what it took me
to start wearing stand collar shirts again.
But I still can't have a cup of hot chocolate
without thinking about you fighting with the barista
at a cafe too crowded for me to hear your heartbeat
The same night you held me too tight in your arms
and whispered
Delilah, I'm never letting you go.
It was raining
and I was counting fences through the raindrop clad window
as we drove down the busy city lanes cramped with people.
People.
Some falling in love
some out of it.
And it's funny how Achilles never protected his heel as much as I did my heart
and yet
here I am
picking up the broken pieces,
one poem at a time,
and putting them in a mason jar
with a pink ribbon tied around its neck,
and a black heart doodled on its cap.
Oh, spare us the mundane details, Del!
Okay!
I don't miss you anymore
but even as I write this, I have hiccups.
Hiccups. I just don't get the science of it.
How can someone missing me a hundred miles away
shake up my internal organs so much?
I don't get it.
I also don't get how you never remind me of you and me
but you remind me of cold August evenings
You remind me of sad poetry and sour strawberries
You remind me of empty park benches and pink sunset skies
You remind me of a dying wildflower
You don't remind me of you and me.
You remind me of tragedy
Just what Achilles reminds me of.
Just what cold January mornings remind me of.
View from Cellular Jail, Andaman and Nicobar Islands
