universal history





i have been writing

wrong, punctuating words

where they don't belong. 

i should have tried

to find words that equate how it feels. 

instead what i did, was remember: a night in the same city, 

that day, two lovers echoed my words

back to me. 

my metaphor should've included

lodged memories, but i failed 

to find anything analogous.

to the form a poem holds, 

i can never approach—

not deliberately, 

not without intention. 

years i’ve never seen, 

cannot conceive the old age barren ahead

but i have been told, that i have.

this is what comes through

tired, in my lack of imagination. 

i struggle even now, to imagine anything 

brute and powerful, something natural

resembling the sensation of sudden memory—

captive of everything in only 

one moment. there, you remember 

the agreeance shared 

by all lovers, or a curse 

whispered another night, 

within an embrace. i wished him, 

fated him, with insomnia. 

so i can manifest, as the anguish and fatigue

that sleepless eyes court. it turns into 

desire to sleep, only here where i am. 

cruelty i cannot abandon, can it

find itself lodged too? between this memory

and the next, because this, could go on indefinitely. 

i remember now yesterday’s discovery, a phrase

equating magnitudes to language, as mathematics does. 

we are composed of limits, you and me

especially, but we could be

tending towards infinity.

i can lay, still as now

waiting for them, all the memories lodged

in unknown crevices, 

too many of which

have selfishly replaced, ones 

that aren't yours.

i was certain of inspiration that night

only days before you left

the second time, because love has always

claimed cruelty with more vigour than war.

which is why, meaning

can alternate forever,

between what is truth and isn't. 

between us i can guarantee

such transcendance, endlesss, 

same as some in the past, beckoning

future affairs as well, it is that universal. 

in my river, with a flow akin

to skin and this obsession,

you can step in twice

defying laws of transience, and i

will remain the same.


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