Stranger

By Tanisha Desai

Sometimes I wonder if it was all a dream If those songs your eyes sang were actually written by  me. 

Did you ever exist? Were you my work of art? The missing piece I created to fix my broken parts? Scintillas of ink splatter my heart. 

The place where I wrote your name in carmine  

Now lies forgotten in tears and grime. And now I stumble forth through the clandestine whispering  trees 

They giggle, they sneer, I know it’s about me. Sometimes I wonder if I can fabricate a memory.  But that doesn’t explain the very real mystery. 

If ghosts are illusory, why do I feel hollow? More than the trees, which now look like gallows? If your flame didn’t exist, why am I charred to the core? 

Why do I feel the pain of something that wasn’t there at all? 

The trees, they embrace me. Dirty traitors, they are 

Liquid sunset oozes from my body as they prick and scar. 

But they’re just trees. I feel deluded. Am I seeing straight? 

Maybe I’m imagining them too. But then why do I feel their weight? 

Like the weight I still carry from what you left behind. 

But I’m sure even after that life, I never once cross your mind. 

Amid the phosphenes and the blur, nebulous in haze, 

I can almost swear that I see your face. You look beautiful.  

You’re the sun. In the sea that surrounds you. 

I’ve tried to find you so long. Now you’ve finally found me too. 

I stumble forth and grab you, but I’m wretchedly clawing at air, 

I fall to my knees. I need to breathe. But no oxygen- there’s nothing there. 

There was once a time when our paths intertwined. 

Once upon a time, I had called you mine.  

My blood erupts in an explosion of flames Maybe you did exist.  

Maybe you were there. But I know I was your game. 

My heart pounds out of my chest. Say something, anything, please! 

But I can’t do anything. You’re a mirage. In the deafening cold, I freeze. 

I sit there and shiver and I think of you  

You were the sun. Couldn’t you share some warmth with me too? 

I want to forget who you are. I want to forget your name. 

So why is it that I still remember it? Why is it a stabbing pain? 

In my heart, in my chest, in my very brain.  

God, I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. I thought I was your moon. You were my sun.  By the gilded aurum in my eyes, you promised me you’d always be stunned. Captivated by the cold of the moon. 

You’d be my sun. My sunset maroon. The moon without the sun is nothing but a shadow. Elusive and invisible in an infinitely dark meadow. 

The sun and moon can never share the same sky  

How was I so deluded that I thought you could be mine. 

I don’t think I even existed in your world. It didn’t take long for the hidden chapters to unfurl. I read every word. I scraped desperately through your heart 

I wanted to know you knew me. And of your world, I was a part. 

And then I realized this miserable lie 

I tried to make me part of you. To share the same sky. 

You’re not the one who didn’t exist. 

It was me. 

Goodbye, stranger. It’s been long enough.  

Now a long, forgotten memory, once a first love.

By Tanisha Desai