Arcadia

90

Ode to a skull tattoo

Before I met you I didn’t know that eternity is a single moment, 10 minutes for forever, 10 minutes on a crowded bus where you touch my hand and I put my arms against your back, stare at the skull tattoo on your neck and wish I could know how your skin tasted there. I wished you could love me with your hands and lips, salt lips and sweet tongues and I wanted to give you all I have, you smell like stale sweat and I am not wearing anything under my sweater and that in enough, for now. The road from Kankurgachi to Beleghata is the same as it was when I was 9 and 12 and 16 but everything around it changes. There’s a new metro station at Phoolbagan, we are becoming a metropolitan at last, it seems. The city is changing everyday and I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much, but the road will always smell like your stale sweat now, now that I have loved you, even when everything has changed and the world is destroyed by nuclear war. Hold me now. The sky is the same grey shade as your shirt. I wish you could love me and I could love you, but if we lived our whole lives together in 10 minutes, got married and moved to the country to have 4 kids and 2 dogs it will still never be as beautiful as this. It was meant to be like this, don’t you see? We were meant to be like this, with me touching your back under the grey winter sky and that is enough. I loved you and you loved me so my wish came true.

My stop is here, I am going to get off now and not look back, not even once. Don’t look at me from the window. I hope I don’t see you again. I don’t think I will be able to take the pain of it. I will walk this road if I miss you.

I don’t think I will.