If I Could Write

By Yuvraj Sharma

If I could write, I’d write about you

The way that poets do

If I could write, I’d paint a picture of you with my words

Describing your pulchritude

I’d trace the scars on your back and your wrists and your thighs

And navigate them like routes leading me to my destiny

To understand what you went through and still go through

If I could write, I’d make sure your name was etched in every book to read,

So that the way you smiled, or ruffled your hair could be preserved in history

But more imperatively, I would engrain your name on some far away day

Describing your dazzling smile, your hair flowing like a tide

And your confident stride

To ensure that you lived in the future too

For you have been living in the past for far too long

And I was scared that you might get stuck there 

And never make it to the bright future waiting ahead of you

If I could write, I’d write about how you saw life

How you knew it was meant to be lived

If I could write, I’d write about how you wandered without getting lost

Nobody could do it like you

If I could write, I’d write about every version of you

But if only I could write

Alas, I can’t.

Because all the ink has been drained from the ink pot of my body and is splattered beside me on the floor

Now my only hope is that someone will come and dip the nib of their pen in my red ink and write my stories and my eulogy for me…

By Yuvraj Sharma