It's Been a Year Since You've Gone

 It's gonna be a year soon

To the day that you left us 

And you won't come back

Not this time 

The flames have taken your body

The Goddess your soul

You won't see Aishani in a saree 

You won't write my name in a book anymore 

You don't know Kafka came back to me

You don't know of the package in my bag for Bukka 

I look behind me at the books on a shelf in my room

Thank you for reading Lord of the Rings for me 

I wish Basu had known you

I wish Pious could hug you

I wish I could get insight from you about the project 

That made me take a hiatus from this blog 

All of my friends 

Some of them at least 

Still have mothers 

They all try in their way to be there for me

My hands are shaking as I type 

Maya di is gonna have tears in her eyes 

When I send her this so late on Messenger

Reema ma'am will probably...I don't know anymore what she'll do

Baba? You know I'm taking care of him

Tell Thakuma I said hi

I hate that some days I don't miss you

And breathe a sigh of distress on others 

When missing you becomes so huge 

That I want to curse all the people who have not gone through what I went through 

Do I want you back? No

The one goddess I give a shit about took you away

What sort of person would I be to ask for you back?

I proudly say that Lopa's son is not afraid

But Ma, without you here 

I wake up afraid, push it aside, look at Baba 

And I live 

I don't know what this is, I lost control a long time ago

I wasn't ready to lose you so soon

But I guess you had to go

There's a lump in my throat

I want to cry

No tears come, they never have 

I want you to know, if at all you can

That I will live on

And though you are dead and gone 

Believe me 

Your memory carries on

It's been a year since you've gone

And yet I live on, as I must 

One day it'll be two, then five 

Brijesh da will retire 

And one day, I will stand at the same door you stood at a year ago

This then, is truly how the world ends eh?

Not with a bang, but a whimper?

Am I saying that right?

I have to go ma

Baba wants water 

You did say that what separates us from animals

Is that we don't refuse a fellow human water 

I have to stop now, I have to sleep

Just as you went to sleep

And now instead of your warm voice lining the text in each book I read 

There is a voluminous silence 

That no shriek can pierce 

That no song can break