I used to dedicate odes to you
and paint your features
in my head with colourful hues.
No day would pass
without your entrance
into my trance.
I named my art after you
and every act was coined
with you in mind.
Things got odd between us.
Life got even with things;
It tossed us like a coin.
We didn’t see a head way,
I saw a tail end.
Ours was a case
of a fisherman at a sea
of a thousand fish.
After a long while at sea,
he sees a fish, very close to the bay.
“It is iridescent, unlike the bony rest.”
He decides to hunt it,
“Not with hooks, my hands will do.”
Even the sandy bay feels his breath.
Just when he thinks he has grabbed
the fish on the head, it wriggles away—
It is its tail he caught, not the head.
This fisherman’s gaze was beclouded
with a haze of the pains of a beauty lost;
May he not die at sea.
May this heart which I clutch
like a newly born babe,
be free from choking: death’s clutch
as I watch you slip away.
