Ordinary Person

Remember when we rented
that off-white cottage
with red, sloping roofs
in the mountainside?
The tea plantations
glistened with dew,
the mist had a nebulous
charm about it like
a philosopher’s ruminations,
questioning everything and
everyone with the haze
of his suspicions,
even the rusty train track
that ran through the valley
we overlooked had
a fading, brown charm –
a snaking echo of an epoch
when the place bustled
with people.
We had our allure too,
one soaked in the simple
golden haloed syllables
of innocence,
euphonious and so unlike
what we became:
forces of rancour and
ugly, green pillars of resentment,
your laughter that brought
to mind a bougainvillaea’s
rosy bloom, full and spilling
out of your mouth without
a hint of sardonicism soon
forgotten, hidden behind an
inky veil of malice, and my
interest in the little things of
life like ushering in mornings
with psalms of praise
becoming fits of pique.
I think of the cottage’s veranda
with its little plastic chairs,
the light brown door to the
cool basement that had
a small but comfortable bed
each time I try
to futilely engender that
trustfulness that made
the world a blur,
that feeling that made reality
spin on an axis of
unimportance,
making holding you in my
arms and looking into
your brown eyes the only fact,
then guilted by conscience,
I overcompensate
using cloying words,
a maudlin rush straight out
of a poorly acted wedding scene,
the three words that mean
so much reduced to nothingness,
and I also becoming bone
without marrow, a ribcage that
doesn’t enclose a heart,
but then I remember who
wept with me when everything
looked like tattered cloth,
stained crimson or
a dusty, patchwork quilt
that promised no warmth,
and perhaps I forget or
pretend to forget the years
of decorating togetherness
without meraki, and I hold
you again, the cares of
the world uprooting us,
but those eyes holding
depth that I believe I
can clasp once more.