Transgression

In an ideal world,
I would have moved cities,
bought myself a small apartment and a
cane basket to lower down the window,
should I need groceries or fresh bread.
I would take apart all connections,
only to make my old parents that one
phone call every first of the moon,
to say that I was under
the same night as them.

To get by, I would take a job
that could be done without, and stop by
every day at the office in the hope
that someday, I would buy some olive oil
to go with the bread.
I wouldn’t make any friends,
because by now I would have understood
that people didn’t understand my story;
refusing to acknowledge that
my vocabulary wasn’t enough
to narrate it, and their experiences
insufficient to relate to it.
And above all, I would shut out
prose – to live on whatever poetry I could muster.
I’d shut out politics, world issues,
and even stray gossip,
to live on these few things –
sunshine,
black dresses,
fresh bread,
olive oil,
poetry,
and heavy doses of memory.

For I would make it so opaque
to everyone, and even that power in the skies
to see my broken heart and the stripped off life
that lay bare my soul
the day you left me without as much as a word.
I would put words to paper,
but not let them heal me
to make it plain
that my loss was the greatest of all;
and no one did anything to hold me as I fell.
Neither did they give me 40 days to mourn,
nor did they bring food to my house;
but above all, they put up their lights during festivals,
and said it wasn’t much to cry over,
defiantly expecting me to join in
as if my world wasn’t cut into half.

And so, I would leave it all,
and wear black while I waited in that apartment,
waited for my pain to heal,
no matter how long it took,
and the skies would apologize to me,
and my pouring tears would fall on the
sears in my heart,
and I would have help
to stitch myself back again.

But as this isn’t an ideal world,
I wear pink lip-gloss tonight,
and watch a film about drug addicts.
He hands me the popcorn,
and I don’t think of you anymore.