fade.
I don’t actually remember you
From the first time we met
There was an old phone, an empty house
And dark curtains that danced slowly in dust-dirty sunlight
It felt like your voice poured through my ear into my blood
And never left
I don’t know when I first I saw you
Everyone was loud
And you should have seemed small
Partially lost in the crowd
Partially swallowed by the cloud
It seems like the café itself smoked
The building was on fire
Like a hotpot of burning dreams
I remember the oud that wafted from the saree pallu, flapped by the lady sitting beside me
I had come with them but I left with you
If only you knew
That I don’t remember you
Or anything about you
I don’t recollect you from the first time we touched
There was a room that spun around us
Hardwood floors that couldn’t catch a breath
Sinking, moving, flowing
My legs widowed from my knowing
I wobbled like a fish now alien to the water it grew in
One step forward, three steps back
It felt like a waltz
With a crack and scratch
We’d never move on
I don’t know
Did we almost kiss
There was alcohol-stained breath
Car seats
And noses playing at tilted shifts
I don’t know why you like sleeping so much
Maybe I’d remember the first time we made love
If you woke up and told me
There was nothing I knew that could prepare me
I still can’t say what the feeling is like
It feels like unknowing
I wish I could say that I remember your words
You were so full of them
silences were hardly heard
they were nothing romantic
but they had a bite
like peanut brittle
hard to chew;sweet to eat
I’d try hard to fight them
But they stick on to my teeth
I’d have to work through them for sweet release
Your “nice” thoughts were few and far between
I’d live them like prayers
Repeat them like chants
Till they became nothing
But sounds dissolved into
the mind where they were romanced
You didn’t leave an impression
Neither did your ways
you were there; just as a plain as a sip of tea on a rainy day
like a home I had walked far away
from
so when I did move from the haze that was my life
through the mirrored maze
that was your plight
you were me, reversed
in a game
that had no rules
no middle no end
just a start on an infinite loop
why would I remember you
you are as forgettable as breath