Goodbye?

How do you give a farewell
when time runs so fast
that by the time I finish
uttering ‘Goodbye’,
you have already traveled
257 meters in the air?

My hands tremble
as they try to become
conch shells, but fail
to save your voice,
like conch shells
save voices from the sea
from over a hundred years.

My back curls a little
and I bury my face
closer to the screen
to feel closer to pictures
we didn’t take,
yet the only thing
I end up feeling
is farther apart.

I don’t feel Gold is
the most malleable substance.
I’ve grown up to believe
it’s distance.
Because distance
can feel the same
across a bed, a room,
a city, a country;
an entire lifetime.

Have you ever thought
what it feels like
to see your memories
in advance? Would you care
to take a dive and tell me
how you deal with goodbyes?

Because I’d like to find out
if your heart does break
a little, and if you hide
a small tear, that builds
in the corner of your eyes
as you float up, and the people
you leave behind sink,
in some way or the other?

Letters get posted,
some received, some lost;
like songs.
Everything is risked
when you begin to feel
the heavy and the light
that comes with ‘Goodbye’.
You don’t know how many days
it will take to forget faces,
and places you went to.

It’s begun to rain here,
and it reminds me
of how you think
I am indecisive.
Words spill out
and become sentences.
Like days, becoming years.
My poems, you don’t understand
and for once, just for once,
I think it’s okay.