Poem: What’s in a goodbye?

years from now
i might wake up one night and
would want to know
why you left
so hurriedly. probably the crude
details staring stark might be
the only ones left to chew–
the unanswered texts,
a voice bellowing on the other end
of our last phone call, and pain
stabbing a familiar void onto my chest.
we would forget us, all
those moments we smiled just because.
like the sea that erodes its own waves
this too would erode
us lost in a time
when love was nascent
and us cupped in a seashell of a world
where the sea was still,
the wind and waves never whispered
goodbye

Notes:

• This poem was read by Shivapriya at the Pride 2019 edition of Orinam’s Quilt, held on June 16, 2019, at ICSA Chennai.
• Image above adapted from ‘Coastal Erosion at Mount Lavinia Hotel’ by Pol van den Scheetek, WIkimedia Commons licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license here.