Six Seasons Review #It Will Have To Do

'It Will Have To Do' was published in Six Seasons Review, November 2017 issue

It will have to do

And perhaps it is enough to imagine you

Sitting open haired by another window

This evening, with some soft music

In the background. Perhaps it is enough

To lie languidly with a book and imagine

You similarly reading, without fixing specificities

Of what you read. Enough to know that you write

Without the urge to read each one you ever wrote.

It will have to be enough to know that you smile

That you are still sometimes as beautiful, and as

Brusque, without the need of me being there

To see. It will have to do to imagine you all alone

In the strangest of places, poking around

With that camera. It will have to do

To think that you probably have good reasons,

Because questions will have to remain unasked

Throttling my throat with their scorching dust

 no water in sight. It will have to do,

It will have to do, as I sit poring over a pile

Of assignments, to imagine you with another such bundle

With similar shrieks, with just another bunch of faces:

Curious eager bored mocking uncaring. It will have to be

Enough to know that you ARE, without knowing where

To know that you are loved, without aching to be the one

To love you. From now on, imagination and memory

Will have to suffice, unspoken apologies will have

To suffice with a prayer that you understand the wordless.

Perhaps the idea of you is larger than you, or the colour

Of your orange nailpaint or your mekhala. Perhaps the idea

Of you stretches to birds on trees outside my balcony

To the salt tears I lick with my tongue, perhaps it pervades

Objects in this room which act as reminders, perhaps

Similarly sitting, similarly reading, similarly similarly

Similarly finding connection in absence, in difference

Perhaps this migraine connects me to you, my hair,

my kohl, my dailyness connects me to you, perhaps

A poem, a sketch, a bird, a dream,

 influence, desire similarly similarly . Perhaps,

 the idea of you is here to stay. Perhaps,

it is enough to thank you and set you free.