Eleven
Amla Rashingkar '20

"But there still are stars in the sky, and the moon will shine just like your eyes did when I made you laugh. The world will keep spinning underneath the golden sun, and you'd keep looking at the heavens and try to map out constellations in the galaxies like you did on my skin when it was dark and we were alone and all I could hear was your shaky breath against the beat of my heart. As you'd go on your path, I'd go on mine. I hope that when you reached wherever you wanted to go and lit up the heavens with your darling smile, you'd be able to look to the surface and see slivers of the extra terrestrial and be reminded of me, because I can't escape you. There'd always be that one invisible, never disappearing force, pulling me right back to you like gravity."

It's been eleven draining days and numbing nights.
I've woken alone to eleven rusting dawns
with the stale taste of your memory lingering, slowly sinking
into the shadows that reside in the corners of my mouth,
tracing the outline of the ghost of your touch
on my fingertips and feigning your warmth
as it nestled deep into the cavity between my neck
and my shoulder, right where you would lie,
peaceful and unbothered.
It feels like ages but it was only eleven sluggish afternoons
ago when the stars took you from me,
when you shut your eyelids and never opened them again.
Eleven evenings I went to bed alone, lulled to sleep by the sound of my tears
raining like a river onto the dent in our mattress because it still smells like you.
Eleven days since your lips went cold and my mouth burned
with emptiness because yours can't land on mine,
with the kiss that started in your brilliant eyes before it
even dreamt of calling my name.
It's been eleven days since your heart beat with mine,
eleven days since I heard your wind-chime laugh,
since I held your hand and saw you smile and felt you breathe.

I'll never feel that again. I'll never feel you again. You're gone.
Eleven days will turn into eleven months, and
months will turn into years and decades into centuries and soon an eternity
I'll have to wander alone.
Eleven eternities stripped away from you, my lovely, beautiful you,
the piece of me I'll never get to see again.
It feels like forever. It feels like you were my forever,
but it's only been eleven draining days and numbing nights. ▲