You will be unable to mourn me because I have not claimed any gravestone in the ground.
You will bash your drum set and curse that the notes spell out my name, and the sting of wine will sear through you like my words used to do.
You will try to escape our past but detaching yourself is as difficult as the way quicksand descends upon rotten bodies.
You will try to run past our reminders, only to see my features in the faces of pretty strangers.
You will hurtle towards me like a hurricane unable to deter from its path; like gravity unable to resist its own pull.
You will learn from me all the ways that love matters, and I will take you to rollercoasters and hold you so tight on the rides that you will be unsure whether the dizziness is from me or the loops.
You will marry another, and as your daughter crawls into your bed after nightmares, she will ask the story of your first love and you will tell my tale.
We will live apart, but you will be left with the taste of my love and the wreck of knowing why cyclones are named after people.

And when your daughter falls in love with my son, you will look into his eyes and see my soft, brown ones.

The guilt will soak through you like a sponge, and the only thing you will ever think about is what you could have had with me.

~

We are right person, wrong time.

Writer – Alvia Farooqui
Editor – Olivia Sang
Artist – Jessie Zhang

–May 2024–