For Neither Ever, Nor Never, Goodbye...
A free-verse poem after Apparat's 'Goodbye'
I don’t know what to say anymore.
I have written this poem a million times inside my head,
whirling each word, each letter round and round inside my cerebrum,
coating it with layers and layers of excruciating ache and grief.
Sometimes, I think I should have put pen to paper
when my wound was still fresh.
But the words were scared of me.
They didn’t want to come to a woman who was splintering herself
by thinking about how she could have been a saviour.
Do you see it now?
My whole skin is tattooed only with ifs, buts, and whys.
If I could have been there for you…
But you didn’t trust me enough…
Why didn’t I check up on you?
A thousand different scenarios gnaw and eat through my flesh and bones,
making my whole being swim in an ocean of regrets.
Sometimes, I console myself that I’m already an abode of devastation.
What’s another one going to do to me than add to the mess?
But this devastation would be that nasty stain that wouldn’t go away.
I have to live with it, looking hard into it every day.
You see, this poem would be disarrayed, much like how my soul has been
since you left without any goodbyes or answers.
All my neural networks have been rejecting the fact
that you are no longer a living, breathing, thriving human being.
That there are no more footprints of you on this Earth.
That you will never get to drink another hot tea on a hot summer’s day.
Even the songs that we both loved do not know how to help me wade
through something as catastrophic as this.
Amidst all this, I want to ask you – What song did you listen to at the last?
Didn’t music, the very thing my blood is made up of,
and the very thing that carried you through your darkest hours, save you at last?
I cannot even hate it because it is the only thing that gives me
the warmest hugs whenever I crave them.
You see, I have been served only mango ice cream at three different events.
The flavour you loved the most.
Maybe you are trying to let me know of your presence.
Maybe all the random songs that pop into my mind out of nowhere
are sent by you to reassure me that everything is fine with you.
Or maybe this is how I try to make sense of my grief.
There are days when I feel perfectly normal.
Like you are still out there, plotting your next annoying remark
as a reply to something I posted online.
And then there are days when I feel that my solar plexus has ruptured,
with all the seven stages of grief colliding with each other inside my body.
I’m never going to bid you goodbye as something or the other
clangs at my heart with a remembrance of you.
I will grow around this, keep flourishing as I always did,
and let this pain co-exist peacefully with all my other emotions.
It’s funny how time has suddenly become a villain in my life.
Throughout January, I was irritated that the month wasn’t moving fast.
I even willed it to go to February soon.
Now, what wouldn’t I sacrifice for it to be January 31st once again?
But every morning, my phone flashes a date that’s so alien to me.
It will never be January 31st, 2025, again.
We both loved time travel so much.
In the end, I have realized that time is the only thing that cannot be bent.
Time, to you in another plane, is an illusion.
Time, to me in this murky reality, will be a healer.
Time, my arch nemesis, will keep both of us safe.
~Kavya Janani. U
If you love my poems, please purchase a copy of my poetry books here - https://linktr.ee/kavya.janani
You can read my other freeverse poetry here: Freeverse Poetry by Kavya Janani. U