Walking into the apartment
where I spent so much time
with you, I can’t help but be
inundated with memories,
the times we spent doing nothing
but talking for hours on end
about the most inconsequential
things, the times we spent
watching ‘something that will
make us laugh,’ because we were
so tired of the dark, melancholy
shows on Netflix and Prime,
the times we drank wine
and I, being the sad drunk,
talked about the ephemerality
of all things, taking a line
out of Nothing Gold Can Stay
and expounding on it with
shameless, mawkish sentimentality,
the words spoken in D minor
(at least in spirit)
while you giggled, tried your
best to cheer me up.
I touch the beige walls (you
hated that colour), I touch the
granite table where we ate
so many meals together. First
in joy and then in silence.
And echoes of who we were
makes me want to call you
and say I love you still,
but then I realise we fell out
of love while we were still in it,
the realisation that everything
was a shade of yesterday while
we still hoped for crimson sunsets
holding us in a healthy-unhealthy
way, the joy of the past hitting us
harder than it should,
making us want to slow down,
comprehend where we went wrong.
I never got an answer, and I don’t
know if you did. All we got in the
end were justifications, the mind’s
attempt at soothsaying, defending
reasons to stay, and reasons to leave.
It’s strange that we slipped into
a coma while remaining lucid,
saw the trembling hands of darkness
while the light still enveloped us,
but by and by, we’ll believe that
we did the right thing.
You’ll move on,
and I will too, and something clichéd
like ‘love wasn’t enough’ will take
precedence over any other thought/
buzz/ drunken lullaby saying
anything different,
and cheesy, alliterative
passages like
‘she used to whisper sweet
somethings in a winsome voice’ will
coat every line of poetry I attempt.
I pick up my things and lock the door
after leaving the key inside to
ensure that this is indeed the end
and not some vague darting back
and forth between searing passion
and the deep blue. I walk to the street
and toss them in my car,
looking up at the
complex once more,
cigarette in hand,
people passing me by, not knowing
my story, and a reluctant me,
not wanting to enter someone else’s
tale yet.
Ordinary Person 
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