The Art of Dying

You taught me right from wrong...
the difference between a butterfly
and a moth...How to wire a plug –
how to paint a still life by ignoring
the objects, and colouring the spaces
in between. What you didn’t teach,
was how to learn to lose you.

Your raincoat – thirsts; bone-dry
in the hall. Your pen – still
in the inkpot, chides a pristine
blotter...your piano eats its heart out –
tongue-tied and perplexed; you,
the only one – spoke its language.
Your easel weeps, empty handed,
bereft of canvas, and oily rags.

A bungle of mornings, and a blunder
of afternoons, pile up in a corner
of my room...oblivious, it seems,
to the sanctity of time; acting as if
no repentant tide ever wept vain,
briny tears – enough to fill the sea
that took you for its own.

And then there are moments,
like these, when I recall
your love-affair with lavender
and lilac; your name, on my lips –
an undying echo at the last grey light...
as a peignoir of mist and angled stints
of sunlight snag on purpure thorns
of goodbyes. Only now do I fall in,
there is no way on earth, I will ever
learn the art of how to lose you.