PROUST'S LAST PAGE

A lifetime of death

is handwoven into my chest

Eternities of afterthoughts awake

In retrospect, I did not choose,

you came to me, as I awaited you

You left before we met:

The clock resets to mark your turn,

Your bags are packed,

But you do not move the pawn

The driver is hooting before our first rendezvous

We let him wait while we kiss our parting kiss,

And in an impromptu referendum of two, we unanimously voted to remain in place, to stand still, to stir not, to curl up within ourselves and ignore the background noise, to negate our surroundings, to negate our very existence, to disengage ourselves from ourselves, to linger in our nothingness, and then proceed to write a masterpiece only to throw the manuscript into the fire with no remorse, and finally demolish our temple even before we built our cult

You fell in a forest and you did not exist before I knew you

You will therefore cease to exist once I forget you, unless you return to haunt our first encounter under the flowerless jacaranda, stunted from blooming, unless you torture the memory of our future in a fluorescent delivery room deathbed: born into a life of misapprehension, a first and last cognizant thought is conceived in sweaty terror, ‘was it real?’

From the grave we came and to earth we shall return

Every tree was once a fossil, and every fossil, once a tree

Every lover once was lonesome, and alone shall always be

**

Kakuma, July 18, 2019