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All Friends Lost and Found

‘How are you?!’ for the eightieth time

Or should I be more creative this time, perhaps,

draw the constellation of your face

across the night sky outside my window;

your smile a little too big and bent to the left,

Indeed I’ve been juggling the right phrases all evening,

unearthing all the words that would stab you on the chest until you bleed awareness and conscience.

But before that let me lift you up by the ribs,

and put you into the attic of our golden days together,

those afternoons we ended up on the hood of an old, rusty car

where we debated conspiracy theories

about the end of the world.

No wonder you easily forgot me as you had your shoulders constantly

in parallel with the horizon,

your eyes eager for the turn of the twenty-first century

as I sat there taking my time in studying your face.

But you forgetting me is not the root of my agony

for I just wonder about my letters, those reservoirs of

memories we harbored together

losing their way within the vacuum of your silence;

those that take the shape of origami boats--some floating aimlessly at the middle of a calm ocean,

some consumed steadily by quicksand in a desert,

yet all the same,

each slowly slipping away as I speak

and as you keep on chasing after the illusions of Future.

Still, as I stand here wondering if you will ever reply to my letters

or find me in the chaos in your head,

I’m never short of desperation,

as you can see from the torn oregano which I had placed in between the folds of this last letter—

its familiar scent sparking your curiosity

like a tragic cliffhanger to a story about me, and you, forgetting.