Anindya Arif
In a desperate attempt
To get you to listen,
I whisper your name in three distinctive pitches.
Instead, you choose to reply in the passive voice and wrongly put full stops.
So, I keep whispering why a body reeking of forgotten poems
Will never be a proper metaphor for love.
You do not ask why,
So I don’t tell.
Instead, in a different metaphor
On someone else’s skin,
Two young lovers dance slowly, to Skinny Love.
Over a battlefield with scattered polaroids and flowers.
Where you weave portraits of fragile men drowning in Madonna’s eyes,
Men who do not come with expiration dates and men who overdosed in front of you.
Your portrait is a monochrome memoir on why it didn’t rhyme when you said you will leave, and why after you, I will run out of topics to write about.
In a fixated corner, you are still holding me in-between your palms, like a wilted flower.
In a post-war July, you leave,
And I have been struggling to write ever since.
Anindya eats music, fiction, and reality — all for breakfast. Send him fresh recipes at [email protected]