Sarvajeet D Chandra

Once, when people left,

they were gone for good.

No calls, no texts, just… absence.

Memories blotting, fading

like damp ink on cheap paper.

But now the past has Wi-Fi.

It returns with profile pictures,

familiar faces, unfamiliar eyes.

So when I got your number,

the past seeped in,

water sliding under a door,

flooding the room before I could stop it.

The light in your eyes

no longer calls me.

A glass river runs between us,

its waters cold.

I see you like a traveler at a café window,

watching a stranger as she stirs her tea.

It might have been easier,

safer, cleaner

to stumble on you on social,

send a thoughtless friend request,

scroll past your photos,

linger at your collarbone for a moment too long,

drop two pity likes, a lazy comment.

Now the number waits in my phone like a dare.

I will not call, meet, or message you.

I wish you well, a final goodbye,

I leave you as silence leaves its weight in the air,

As a candle leaves its warmth in a dark room.