GO INTO THE CREVICE-A REQUIEM FOR LOST FRIENDS.

The following poem sprung from deep-seated memories of the boy whom I had as my ‘best friend’ for almost a decade during both our formative years. But his roots ran adjunct with his mother’s fallacious pride and the friendship pretty much was left hanging by a thread towards its last legs.

Below the poetic form is employed by me to grasp the sense of betrayal that some people take no accountability for.


***

Go into the crevice
and find the friend who
comes out with his
last words
and rotten tracks
through time.
He has the last portion
of his birthday cake
left for you
and his mother carries
an eternal side-eye
& calls your home- ‘small’.

Where do you go to
or look back from
if he
is a darkling
who calls
for your invisibility
on the forums?
He,
with the beast of hauteur
and his mother’s fallacious pride,
as spots around his body.

You only look at your own spot
as a starling
on an abandoned nest.

****

Real dispossession
is to know
that he could question your
place
& make amity’s natural affections
grievances.
It was easy
for him to dethrone
his privileges
for affected weekends
& refuse to offer you
a seat of trust.

***

Hello Mother,
you have read through
the years
the obligatory side-eyes
you had given out
like societal circulars
when I failed to obtain
a seat at the table.
No,
it was yours.
Your son
refrained
from bringing
a dreamer and survivor’s
flowers for your golden vases
there.

So
he gave me a farewell
through an obligatory invitation
at the cinema
and I finally said ‘no’
to the arrangement,
bowdlerizing
a grand estimation
for both your places
in the city.

***

We were children
and I was the youngest
of all.

How do you meet
my gaze now?
To make your son’s
disappearance
graver
than it was
for all those years past.

***

Go into the crevice,
mother,
maybe he’s
hiding there
with the flakes
of ants’ storehouses,
keen to pick one cover
of naivete
or innocence
to make me an
overcoat with.

He awaits
to meet me
at the school auditorium
where we once beheld
the sun of our youth
through
greater terrains
than this future
or your disapproval(s)

*****

Go into the crevice.
Go into the crevices.
You may find us there.

Advertisement