Hakimuddin Radhanpurwala Week 13- If I recalled Correctly

 Ours Poetica

I'm not the greatest at remembering,

    But if I do recall correctly,

There is a little wet paper tucked

    In the corner of my closet.

With little rips,

   Scratches of ink,

And the fading of his color.

The paper has grown old;

                                                                        He can not see anymore,

    Nor can he move.

And so I remember when he spoke,

                                                        When I gossiped with him all night long,

     

And I hid him in the crevices of my journal.

   When we sang, wept, and smiled,

And built a fortress and camped its grounds.

                       When we faced our backs against the thin grass,

And caught the whispers of the stars and the moon.

    When we raised our voices,

And I promised that nobody would take him away from me.

                                                                    When we walked through the high school halls,

And I shielded him from daunting eyes. 

                                                                        When we watched Mom lay on the bed in a gown,

With tubes made of plastic wrapped around

                                                                      Her body, her hair, reflecting the wintery snow—

breaths shortened, murmurs distant.

When she left me, she took a piece of him with her,

I don’t recall what she took,

But it must have been something important.

So when I found him wrapped around my closet,

Face as pale as that winter’s snow,

                    I tried my best to console him,

 And spoke in a tongue we both had known:

I Recall you as a river of words grown old,
Once nurturing my daffodil heart,
I Recall you raising me in your home.
A scuttle of blooming tears thrown apart, Once reflecting my own. 
I Recall you as a talisman perched between my lips, from start,
A nightingale with whom I had once flown. 
I Recall you as a skin like mine
fading day by the day.
I Recall you as another life of me, 
                                                And a salvation to my long forgotten name—

So yes, I remember when someone once told me:

All things change with age.

                                                                                                    

And I recalled correctly,

                                                                                                               the paper never did.