wipe away these words. Surely
No angels with or without wings
Could stand by while
Drop by drop, the ocean swelled
Into a primordial inferno
And then just so surely,
Dried itself up
Surely, those words remain etched
in mis-matched memories of hurt
and regret; swirling around
as dust storms must do in deserts
If I could take away every
Moment when your hand was not
in mine, surely I would rewrite our
story again. But of what use is
yet another story of loss in a world
torn apart by a tiny capsule of
a virus, neglect, miscalculation
panic, greed, and who knows
Maybe even nobility, surely all
the sentinels of faith would write
new stories of hope and love,
when all this is over
And again, while the angels sleep;
on moonlit nights, long dark roads,
Bridges, skywalks, a corridor of white
spaces, eternity, with my feet on yours
holding on to dear life, surely I would
fashion a worm hole
to connect yearning and regret.
If not a worm hole, why not
elevators, airplanes, your doorstep
one hundred coffees, your spoon
that first fed me and those letters
we neither wrote nor read
Surely I will write about that
broken past; blocked but only a door
away. Or a phone call, a message,
unspoken anger in unwritten texts,
blank calls. Imagined lovers
Voluntary blessings. Partings
another day, another life, without
you, without me, with many
what-ifs and could-have-beens
with the others that had left our
mutually empty lives, before we began
But the ocean that was to come
between us is so far away, now
there is no way to make friends
with distance and lock-downs
Surely we have masks and taxis
and a possibility to wipe away
Everything that ever began
And one day when we stop
being the pandemic people,
Surely our story
will be written fresh
on stars born again by
angels with or without wings
And surely those hands will
hold on to each other, even if
there was a tomorrow.
