My nemesis, my friend
How have you made it so that I only exist, if I do, in the spaces you left behind?
My heart knows who you are, but not in that jaded way of poets. No, I have not known you elsewhere before, or in a time gone by. I have not simply known the idea of you.
I have known you, instead, as I waited for your gaze to fall. Not on me, no. I have known you through the way you see the world.
In every pore of my skin, I have come to know of your existence- spices and coconuts, and that striking thing called memory on a moonlit night.
Have you ever passed by a shop, on a lane, somewhere in a sepia-toned city? And have you ever been paralysed by what comes flooding through at the mere hint of something known?
I have known you this way- surprisingly, suddenly, and with a fullness that only my senses are capable of, not my comprehension.
My knowing of you exists beyond such frivolous constraints as time. It isn’t defined by loss as it would in a past, or of hope as it might in a future. It just…is.
Maybe, my act of knowing you will continue to exist in such strange circumstances
In a name at the corner of my eye
In a space with salty French fries
When making dinner, with lemons and pepper
In every single time I see my reflection in water
And always, of course, in the spaces you left behind.
