Since You’ve Been Gone
To M. and the memories we shared.
Since you’ve been gone,
I don’t even know if I’m outside more
or if I’m just staying inside and imagine that I’m still on the outside.
I visited the café at the corner – they’ve just opened;
the menus are all new and the chairs are made of old shaven wood
but all I can think about
is how you would enjoy the wooden decor and the hand-painted walls
and how we would talk on and on about how coconut milk is not
real milk.
Since you’ve been gone,
I don’t know if checking my emails each 5 seconds had, naturally,
grown to be my happiness;
or if I had simply let it become a part of my happiness, grudgingly.
I remember your habit of putting smileys at the end of each sentence,
how you always say I should treat myself better,
how you never care for an honorific at the beginning of the letter,
or how you just end the emails with a simple period
like the story of us.
Since you’ve been gone,
I adopted another cat.
No one in my house like him.
He suffered abuse and now he doesn’t know how to act around human:
Just like me.
I wonder if kindness will fix him up
because it surely didn’t fix me.
I don’t know if I should wait and see the final act of this theatrical story
or if I should just stand up and walk out.
Since you’ve been gone,
there is a lot of things I learn
but I couldn’t learn how to trust me,
or anyone else ever again.
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