an ode to absence

When love left,

I did not how to write of his departure

For, there wasn’t a door he walked out of,

The end, wasn’t as crisp and concise as that,

I, just wasn’t that fortunate.

Love left, in pieces.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, being taken apart and put away

Love left, in phases.

The way the sky changes colours at sunset,

And before you know, it’s dark already.

My romanticism of his absenteeism gets the best of me

for in his absence;

I learnt how to sew,

Learnt how to upcycle old clothes

in lieu of timely responses.

I learnt carpentry

To patch up the wooden shelf he said he’d “fix by this week”

In his absence,

When the panic arrived, I had no one else beside me to hold on to while it attacked every part of me,

I was a solitary soldier.

Fighting with the fervour of a fierce frontliner.

Finding strength in paced steps.

In his absence,

I learnt how to wipe my own tears,

Pick myself up off the ground.

This is an ode to absence,

for I learnt the true meaning of a presence—

I learnt I had been unheeding to my own self.

By his obscure preoccupation,

I learnt that love isn’t an obscure preoccupation.

Learnt that love isn’t absenteeism.

Love isn’t falling or rising;

Like the ocean,

It is the calm in the deep of the sea.

Love isn’t phases.

Like the moon, full one day, only a sliver over weeks.

Love is constant and consistent.

Love isn’t for when it’s ‘convenient’

Love is the freedom in the flight of a bird—

And I am tired of making myself believe in his remote controlled aeroplane love.

this is an ode to his absence,

For each time he was ‘unavailable’

‘Unreachable’

‘Busy with something else’

I learnt how to love my own self better.