Notes on Forgetting

By Adharshila Chatterjee


1.

tonight
i am
an abandoned
house,
the kind
whose
beauty
lies in
being broken,
in being lost,
the kind
that is
never marked
on maps
that lovers carry
on their
honeymoons.

2.

there are days
when
you cannot
see me.
i am the rusting
curves of
an ancient
balustrade,
magnificent
and forgotten,
rotting in the rain

my body
is a giant
miasma
of loss
and sawdust.

3.

tonight
i am a
congregation
of questions
you will
never ask.

4.

i am
all of this,
an endless
corridor
whose beauty
is in being
never whole,
never there,
in being almost
but not quite.

tonight
i am this,
the silence
that you
too often
mistake
for nothing.