A letter to end things
Dear phantom Ex
These days you come like a spectre. You are a double-barrelled creature.
I’ve loved you for several years now. The limerence is withering.
The drip has stopped giving.
I sift the soot from the smog. I breathe cleaner air every day.
I even peed a little of you today.
I tell myself: I’m nearly there, on the brink of the skeletal charm,
tipping into where things begin the lonely walk, starting as I once started.
Yet the percussion returns as I learn of your family,
the pleads you unfolded for them
and the dogs your mother named.
Red becomes layered and textured, and slowly skin, supple and beating.
I start resisting metaphors. I drop my toes into the cold nook of our cave.
It cuts the same way. Yet I travel by foot the rest of the distance
to revel in the absence of us, the persuasive drumbeat that drowns out
everything.
I become the percussion. You, the double-barrelled creature.
Double tones, double beats, double drones. I am no judge,
I prefer to see. The drip will never stop giving.
Yet, I wait there, to see it cut the same way,
And wait
for the dawn to wet my head, and fill my cracks.
And then
I can travel back.
Back to starting as I once started.
This is it
So this is where I get off, unable to give a clear picture, an inclusive plan,
waylaid on the road, an unending cruise in slow motion, this life I call mine,
which will be shared less.
About the Author
Kalyani Bindu is an Indian writer and researcher. Two Moviegoers was her first poetry collection. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Kali Project (Indie Blu(e) anthology), 45th Parallel, Better than Starbucks, Half Empty Magazine, the Indian Express, Modern Literature, New Asian Writing, Guftugu, and others. Check out www.kalyani-bindu.com to read her works.
