I thought to abandon you, the memory of you. To go about a ceremonial purge to free myself of you. I talk to you as if you are here and plead of you to leave, for you were only for a season, the lifetime of a leaf.
I cannot live in the fantasies of maybe’s, what if’s, and what could have been’s. For I was asleep when you were awake; now I am awake, and you are asleep. Maybe.
I try to shut off any form of communication that can get inside. Yet you speak to me in songs, scenes, lines, photographs. Maybe we share a similar muse. I don’t know. Then I think, even if you write a line from time to time that reminds you of me, I’m only a rented muse.
I hate poetry. I hate a whole genre of literature because of you. And the genre hems me in to its purpose to talk about it. To teach about it. For every poem reminds me of you. To introduce it to someone is like a greeting. Hello, again. A sadness comes over me because the sting is felt each time. To approach you again, to think of you. Even if the poem is about something other than love, somehow, I find a way to relate it back to you—a phrase, a line, a word— a maze I follow to find you. If the poetry is handwritten, my eyes follow the curves of each letter to find your signature somehow—like how your “h’s” have a v-shaped roof next to its chimney. It’s your mark on the world where other eyes pull to its shapes.
I’m not obsessed. I say this then think of storytellers who try to convince their audience that they haven’t lost their mind; and as the audience, for them to make such a statement, we are sure to think they have. Well, maybe I have. But at least if we all must lose our mind at some point on this earth, for me, you will be the best reason for doing so. Losing my mind over you. Love. The reality of things. And even when I am 80 or 90 years old— closer to the end than ever—if my mind fails me, I think you’re the only memory that I will keep. I’ll speak your name in my sleep; I’ll speak to you in my dreams; I’ll speak about you to every stranger that’s passing through; and in my dying breathes, you will be my last exhale.
Photograph by Marta Syrko