These months

I open the windows
It’s getting cold in here
Everything’s drying up
And the windows stay open
I used the word I know nothing of
I wanted to save, but I gave
I gave it away
And now
These months
These months are so still
These months
These months are so still

What’s in my head now
Needn’t be seen
Remember I called you
To see how you were
You hadn’t changed
Remember I ran into you in the dark
You hadn’t changed
And now in the leaves that drape the ground
The unwelcoming of your door
There’s a light that sees, I
I don’t think I love you anymore
But these months
These months are so still
These months
These months are so still

And there are times that I think about you
That I think surely still I must love you
Still know you…

~ Asha Ali

* * *

These months I am trying to snooze through an absolute inevitability of every new day without you. These thoughts are scattered across the room, surrounding me as I beg them for only some space, only some freedom to be. I keep organizing physical objects as if their awkward untouchable order will let me gather these emotions into some neat little pile of understanding, while they keep sliding and turning back into the shifting sand of which they were built.

These dreams march into my bed from the times and places where maybe one day I belonged, although it seems to have been a couple of lifetimes ago. These memories carry pain on their shoulders, the kind that fills my mind and leaves my heart empty. It’s only when thinking of you joins in however – or the absence of you right here in this room, where your shadow is needed by this lamp, and your ear by the song I am whispering, and your cheek by the brush of my arm, that accidental one, you know, in the midst of a dream – that I break down, and see the world spin, and lose myself in the dark, and never want to believe in light again. I lack you so much today, I get covered with cold and I drown in the feeling so overwhelming it sucks life out of me. It puts my strength into a shabby bag, the crude one with no holes in it, letting no sun reach my thinking.

I miss you today to the point where I’m determined to never miss you again. I am so tired of loving you, so, so tired. I wish you didn’t infiltrate me all the way to my blood, and dissolve in me, and uplift me to such heights only to drain me dry and leave me empty and throw me down so low, again and again.

I’d live for you, if only you were worth living for.