Popagandhi

because for five years you consumed me, whole, possessed every dream, disenfranchised anyone who dared so much as try where you could not.

i will never be yours: it should be easy, and easy is everything we could not.

because i have cried enough in school toilets and weekly assemblies, onto Corona bottles and coasters, and over poetry. i was prepared to cry t he last after you wed, but now i won’t even have that.

i will never be yours: it should be effortless. effortless, as you know, is that antonym to our anthem.

because at sixteen you said to check back at twenty one, and before i turn twenty one (and before i checked back) you feel the need to say, maybe, maybe twenty five.

i will never be yours: i will never be old enough, nor old enough for maybes or babies. or maybe you will never be old enough for me.

because everything is stolen: afternoons, nights with you, lies to other people and apartments we never owned. you are accidental brushes between seats and toilet breaks, in bars, and accidents in toilets and bars.

i will never be yours: funny how everything changes, but just between us, nothing does.

because you, love, are love crackling on IDD, that silence of my inbox. a private drawer full of diaries of my private mourning, and others’ public tears. if i’m a five year old comet with a sighting every two, you’re perennially in orbit.

i am a train wreck stripped of its velocity while you, quicksilver, smother mercury with bare hands. i will never be yours, because darling, we would never reinvent the wheel.