Yet another poem about Raj…
My Reality
Do you remember all the nights we spent on your couch?
Me saying I was babysitting your daughter while your mother was away.
But they would actually both be gone, visiting the house near the library,
Making sure all the new paint dried the right shade of white.
And I would use my key to let myself into your maroon door,
Kicking my sandals off out on the porch.
I would make myself a steaming cup of masala chai,
Waiting for you to open the maroon door,
Watching the tea bag bleed into the hot water.
I would add some sugar and hand you a matching mug.
You would turn on the TV and sit on the cream leather couch.
We would drink chai and eat Maagi and watch some Telugu movie
With familiar heroes and villains and comedians all in their fifties
With hair dye and wigs playing twenty year olds.
You were already thirty-something and had a few grey hairs
But you never covered them up.
Because I said you looked handsome.
And I liked that you weren’t like all the others.
You were experienced.
You were respectful.
You were intelligent.
You were humble.
You were mine.
And then we grew up
And we grew apart.
Because I got busy with work.
I got busy with buying bagels at the college cafe
Instead of having the time to make chai and Maagi for us.
I got busy with writing for assignments
Instead of writing our stories.
I got busy with making my dad breakfast
Instead of dreaming about you.
I got busy with fighting with my mother
and the anxiety she causes me
Instead of being happy with you.
I got busy with trying to find love
Instead of realizing…
I wish you’d come back.
But maybe that I’m still thinking of you
Is proof that you’re not gone.
Because unlike the rest of them
You were never tangibly here.
So if I say you exist and you are mine
Who can say you’re not?
O’Hara says “pain is logic”.
So, I guess if I throw logic to the wind,
And you stay real,
And we have a chance at happiness…
***After-note: The O’Hara I refer to is Francis Russell “Frank” O’Hara. He was a writer, poet, art critic, and a curator at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art. (If you still have no clue who I’m talking about but would like to know, click here to be redirected to his Wikipedia page). Between the rough draft and final draft of this poem, I had read a piece by him called “Personism: A Manifesto” in which he states “pain is logic”.
And if pain is logic, isn’t logic pain? And doesn’t throwing logic to the wind make life so much more beautiful? Well, it does for me. Because like poetry sometimes only makes sense to the poet who wrote it, sometimes a life only makes sense to the person living it.
