With the hands that I once wanted to write poetry for her every morning, I was made to write the draft of her wedding card. I took the dictation. Word by word. Every word I wrote, shook one brick of the wall behind which I had safely hidden my feelings, feelings that had not so long ago made her very happy. Not enough though to not have me write her wedding card.
There were corrections too. Redrafts and more redrafts. All those phrases and metaphors seemingly made the match between her and her fiancé more apparent, more visible to the invitees. In the end the card actually looked beautiful. And I say this without any prejudice or anger or any feeling of devastation. I told her father that it was the perfect wedding invitation. I wished his daughter, the best in life. But someone else also told him about the other stuff hidden behind the wall I just mentioned.
Terrified of the past, worried about the future that my kind of past could ruin, especially with his daughter’s marriage only a month away, I was asked to leave. When I left, I went away without grudges. A part of me was happy that I was going away. As I was drifting, I didn’t turn like in the movies to catch a last fleeting glimpse of a soon to be bride, even though the face once moved my sun and stars.
They have been telling me since God -knows –when, that true love comes back and if it is meant to come back it will and all that kind of stuff they invent out of nowhere. I wonder how love cannot be true. Wonder how that version has ever worked for anyone. Anyway, I also read somewhere that love is like falling off the cliff with hope that you’d land safely but in the midst of overwhelming indications that you may not. I had jumped off my cliff a little before six months of her marriage. The funny part was that she’d asked me not to. I did nevertheless. And for some reason she joined me. Once she jumped, we floated together. But the flight was terrible with her slipping away every time I tried to catch hold of her. Something told me that she never wanted to be held in the first place. That the idea of floating excited her, apparently far more than my snug warm embrace. Maybe, the guy they gave her in marriage, tried to catch hold of her too. But what he did was even more stupid. The poor fellow tried to smash her onto himself. That was never meant to work. I read about the separation on a common friend’s wall. Yeah, those kinds of things are written there. I also read that they are trying to get her wed for the second time. I felt awful hearing that. I could not lie to myself that I’d begun to re-dream about us when I’d learnt about her being no more married. I know I just told you about how terrible it was.
But even the second time around, I’m poorer than ever. No engagement anywhere to call myself ‘worthy’. But I have a hundred poems now, all written while she was in Australia, living the days and nights of her newfound foreign life. Some months later, my poor words actually get lucky. An abrupt email out of the blue and within the next hour a series of exchanges telling me how lonely she is. I start to write poetry for her, every morning, mostly telling her how beautiful this world is with her around. She always sent a very encouraging response to every verse I composed for her. The sunrise of hope was getting nearer and nearer. Till I got no more emails for a week. A rare week since we’d got in touch after her divorce. I was a little disturbed but not worried. How could I’ve known that my words were so poor that they couldn’t have prevented her from floating once again. Stretching her hands like a bird, ready for the flight under The Coathanger’s arc, to take on the winds and letting herself go off the Harbour Bridge into the endless depths of the river beneath as countless tourists on the Bridge snapped away pictures after pictures of themselves.
'Poor Words' is fiction.
