DEAR YOU

Dear you,
even though you left
I am writing this to let you know
that I’m no longer in anguish and pain
as I have forgiven you,
as I have withheld myself
from fighting back the grief
I once held.

Remember love?
of the time we walked
hand-in-hand by a fully grown tree
with no apprehension of a future
we were to succumb;
as our innocence played coy
with no grave understanding
of what is yet to come;
until the day you left permanently
to make me learn of an absence
I’ve always known and felt.

That day you left,
your fragrance remained
in the scent of belongings
we held together,
which occurred to me;
I’ve lived in someone else
longer than I ever understood;
I’ve grown painfully,
into the limbs of someone else
longer than I could
ever detach away from.

On the day you left,
I unknowingly sung a song,
the one you often sang,
in a tune; later did I realise
as it dawned on me
that I was singing in a falsetto,
when it had no high note
all along; which occurred to me,
how attuned I was—
in sync with your voice,
your bodily movements,
the motions of your slow steady breath,
failing to ever recognise,
we were two distinct bodies in one.

In case you ever wonder,
if I miss you;
I’d tell you
your memory does unfurl
in the grey areas of my brain,
when my mind rummages
through the pictures I keep of you
hidden, in an old wallet you gifted once;
I refuse to look for this wallet—
just like the edges of your pictures
that have yellowed in corners and
are refusing to uncurl.

In case you’re still wondering
if I cry thinking about you,
then you’d remember of the time
I told you how it was easier
to write about heartbreak than love;
but I’d rather tell you otherwise,
how long I waited to forge this memory
into a bitter-sweet one,
where it no longer remained
sour, acrid on the taste of my tongue.

At the end of this note,
I want to remind you
that I’m no longer angry
fear not,
I do not remember you bitterly;
instead,
I choose to remember in you this way—
as the fragrance that remained
on the last day you left
as the song, I sang in a falsetto,
the tune in which
it wasn’t supposed to be sung,
as the bokeh, distant and beautiful,
unreachable, within my grasp,
as the arms I swirled in lovingly,
in the last drive had;
because of what you taught me,
how much one could limitlessly,
grow, change and evolve.

– Shweta Kher