Sweet Dreams, Ladybug

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

I wish I could have done it differently,

I wish we had more time.

I wish you and me together could have been enough to survive the world, the times, the people.

I wish effort alone could have been enough currency for survival.

Do you still call out to me in the middle of the night?

Do you still stay half-starved because dinner alone never felt like dinner at all?

Do you still replay those sleepless nights of conversations

held together with my inappropriate humour,

like something you shouldn’t have laughed at but did anyway?

You said it was my paintings that stole your heart.

We both knew it was the jokes.

Paintings only got me through the door.

The jokes kept stealing the keys.

Like all those times I told you it was your out-of-place canine I stumbled on, 

but teeth were just an excuse to watch you smile;

that sheepish laugh you had, like you got caught existing too honestly.

Like all those times you moved across tiled floors like a clueless penguin on thin ice,

like all those times you scolded cups and mugs and bowls and dishes

like they were emotionally available enough to listen,

like all those times you spoke to cats and dogs and plants and concrete roads

in your mother tongue, with absolute faith they understood you better than people did.

If I could, I would do it all again.

Not differently. Just again.

There was too much left unfinished.

Too many sentences abandoned mid-breath.

The only regret I have is I left carrying the leftovers of regrets;

living with regrets isn't easy, but ladybug —

dying with them is hard.

The dreams we almost believed into existence,

the snow-capped mountains we once stood beneath,

you pretending altitude was negotiable,

your vertigo arguing with the idea of height itself,

the prawns I nearly got killed over,

your allergy acting like it had legal authority, 

the son we almost had, the daughter we almost named,

they are gone now,

like fingerprints on borrowed glass.

Don’t wait up on me, ladybug.

You know I’ve always found closures overrated.

Besides,

we were never good at goodbyes.

Look at me:

caught in transit; not between leaving and being left,

but between what was real

and what we kept rehearsing until it felt like it was.