I wish I could speak a language,
one in which you didn’t exist.

Then I wouldn’t feel like a metallic kitchen
on a winter morning:
a blue tabletop, one abandoned jar of cold milk,
the dew on the windows and
white oblong tiles with a star in the middle.
Clean. And barren.
I wouldn’t feel like that.

And when I hear footsteps
I wouldn’t think it’s you
And when someone touches me on the back
I wouldn’t turn around and expect it to be you
And perhaps when I wake up suddenly
it wouldn’t be with your name on my lips.

If you didn’t exist,
I wouldn’t be like that thick glass, do you remember it,
the one on the window above the front door?
Still intact but with tremors of cracks embroidering it.
I wouldn’t be just like that.

I wish I lived a life
drawn in charcoal
Then how easily I could have reached out
and erased you from it.