☛ October, 2024 issue (Vol. 5, No. 2) will be published on 10 November, 2024 (Sunday).

Since I Exist No More - Tapan Kumar Pradhan (India)

 


SINCE I EXIST NO MORE

 

-         Tapan Kumar Pradhan (India)

 

Let us now presume for a moment

That we had never known each other

 

The soft hours we spent together in café

Happened in another age in another clime

 

The peacock saree I purchased for you

The midnight oil I burned for your exams

 

Funky messages we exchanged on twitter

Were all a random alignment of electrons

 

Which have since auto realigned themselves

To mean something else in some other tongue

 

For someone somewhere else far away

Not related to you me not even her at all

 

Even if you undelete your sim card memories

Nothing should remain now of things we shared

 

But it comes back to haunt me each night

With redoubled brute force

 

Gnawing at my dark entrails

Like strings from a bond which refuses to snap

 

If I have ceased to exist for you (as you say)

Why should you torment me all day

 

all night I can only think of you now

In still larger doses than ever before

 

Writhing in the shadows left by your scars

In sultry footprints of your digital avatars

 

 

****