Things We Do For Love

The bitter stench of the cigarette reminds me of all the times the universe conspired to make an ashtray out of me. It bled me, it put me up in ashes, it reduced me to a small part of an undug well. The smoke rings reminds me of your unsung verses, waiting to be caught between the tips of my fingers and made sense of.When I see you now, you have the same laughter as you did with me, but mine feels borrowed and hesitant against your unruly wisdom. When I see you now, a thousand light years layers, I still measure the length of my strides against yours, faintly hoping to come up again in your drunken anecdotes of loves that got away. I yearn for your time, your carefully constructed schedule that revolves around the things that bring you joy.

You stand at the end of the meandering road each day, a vision in orange and scarlet. My heart jumps at the thought of seeing you talking about the vagaries of your day and holding them against mine. You make the days longer and my miniscule seconds fall short each time, faintly regretful of the life we could have claimed under the starry Nights. The vagaries resonate with the broken strings of my ukulele, the vagaries resonate with the howling tears that I had inflicted on my innocent bedsheet. I would want you to he around, through thick and thin, through all the smokes that are aroused by the burning of our dreams. Dreams! We dreamt together. But you have boarded the yellow bus and have transpired to be someone else. I do not know you. I do not know what you like or what you drink. I do not know if you still exclaim like a child at the magnificence of an abstract painting. I do not know you anymore. I do not know your silly remarks. I do not know your yearnings.

But I will wait for you like Paris waits for dusk each day, thrilling at the touch of nightfall on the gentle brushes of its masters. I will wait for you like I never have before, until I have every discarded ticket stub to cover my walls with. I will wait for you until the city still gives shelter to the yellow cab driver dreamers, hoping for uncalled for rain the the middle of summer. I will wait, like no one else has, or could hope to. I will wait for you to come home. 

I will keep your favourite records stacked in an alphabetical order. I will keep all your favourite movies in a pile from where we can choose from on days when the earth dissipates to nothingness. And I will keep your favourite paintings on the wall so they can point at them, sit silently in front of them, kidding each other and forgetting how we were meant to be nothing yet , we are everything. Remember,I will wait for you...