I am telling you this from another city,

From where your voice and scent

Do not linger in despair: Only the past

Can warn you, can give you hints.

Memory, clearly, is not the enemy.

What thrives in the past

Should not be committed to memory.

Hurt must be pressed out from the body

Like dirty blood from a dirty wound.

For forgetting is a process of renewal:

Everything should be drained

From the recesses of the mind.

Outside, a woman in the street corner,

lying on the wet pavement, beside the garbage can

overflowing with the day’s consumption. Outside, a woman

helpless between the acts of killing time and killing herself.

The girl thinks of home and the family that waits

for her arrival. The man tries to redirect the situation.

You know what, we better try this… The downpour echoes

in the hollowness of her mind, each droplet against the car’s

roof like the man’s lingering taps at night.

He reaches home. On the table, a secret

they wouldn’t know. A mother in bed,

a grainy portrait of a father hanging

on the wall. Here, nobody questions his reasons.

When I tire out from slashing

your name on my skin, this skin the sheet

of this one-sided story, when you barely

reply anymore, when you sound uninterested,

the messages sent are coated with

resentment, and the image of your face

now in haze, the places of memory

slowly flaking, when the weep is a tear

is a moan is a whimper, I will not obstruct

(not once again) this body to disrupt

this chronology. The attempts

to be happy, the measure of a smile,

the gesture of goodbye.

A bargain is made: a confirmation.

A plead echoes: a consolation.

A door opens: an implication.

Yes, she is with me.

The man switches on his TV

and becomes the passive spectator

to the emblems of the city. Onscreen,

the scene slowly pans to a kid, staring back

at the querying reporter. Tell me about your sadness.

There: the boy and his blamelessness.

There: the absence of shame all over his face.

In his room, the man understands the story of it all.

Above the endless pits and hollows

of the city, the memory of you scars me

as blades do on skin. These words drip

like blood on the page. But, it might just

be me who’s still stuck, hurting.

Later, the rain floods the near canals.

Later, the dogs run back to their respective homes.

Later, the traffic jam becomes the cityscape.

Later, the man looks back at the tires like eyeballs ogling at him.

Later, the uniformed students say dare, say go.