Take care

[for Dayadi]

Times of confidences come to me
as gardens from another planet
unnamed but clearly mapped
with libraries and books
songs and stories that would at will
break into flavors that soothed our tongues
and cured it of the harsh-word curse.

The claims of seniority and equality of status
length of knowing and love,
of poetry, places, phases and passion
did not count;
I belonged to her, through and through
then and forever, non-negotiable.

But we slipped, she and I
into orbits that seldom intersected
and were shrugged off
in the nonchalance of knowing
or things more pressing.

Old words torment the vacancies
threadbare histories nibble
and the edges of memory wince
in the inevitability of this time.

And then skipping through a paddy field
uncluttering doubts with fairy tale swish
she sprinkles the universe
with an eau de cologne smile.

She takes care to take care.