regrets
May 20, 2010
it’s true i wish he would write something. he doesn’t know, all he understands is an apartment empty of my paintings, my poems, my wall decorated in handmade jewelry, books of poetry missing, even the ones i engraved with his name. i wake up at midnight wanting to check for an e-mail, some confession that would help me forgive. that would make this separation real from both ends. but nothing. a few words thrown into the silence, none the ones that needed to be written. no truth, no understanding, no restitution.
there was the one who loved me before him, who walked away only to return two years later to say she made a mistake, you should have been my children’s mother, now there’s no return from exile. clarity came too late, too much had changed. now a lover who lacks that fire, she said, raw passion. the flame that threatened control.
you left so many times i knew the scars would be stubborn to fading. now your silence, your quiet resignation to this bitter outcome, almost drowns away the sounds of your voice denigrating me, a bracelet i built for you hurled and exploding against our bedroom wall, its bloodstone jasper pieces lost in beige carpet. i gathered those bits together, put them in your jewelry box full of my creations, to remind you of your promise to string it back together. then i left the keys on your bar, pulled the door closed behind me.
one day will you remember this: that my love alone could never heal you, could not replace your fear of your father nor compare to your mother’s worship. will you call your error, your reluctance, your regret by name? or will you deny your heart’s logic completely? to whom, if anyone, will you speak those words? in my absence, only Ganesh and Kali remain, inert atop your bureau next to that broken bracelet in its carved wood box. and will you transfer your grief to their forms? or will you stay the same: hold everything within, wondering why you lie apart from the world outside?
© 2010 tahminah zaman
