The Unleft Poem by Elisha Chhabra

Because I let you take our cat
and upcoming vacation tickets
and our favorite polaroid 300
and all our stuff, now yours,
leaving nothing to myself
but independence
of starting over
may be a little sadder, but wiser,
after 'we' are hopelessly done
like my shallow crave of growing
an inch or two taller or slimmer,
Not that I don't sense you now
in every sip of our favorite coffee, sadly
the guy at cafe smiles and lifts his heels
to see from how far you follow me in,
or when I put the same shirt
I wore the first time you hugged me,
hard to get why it still whiffs of
your bergamot and olive blossom, aroma
that grew on me like a tumor.
I still see you in my dreams
laughing with me, sometimes brawiling,
defining and undefining
the meaning of love.
Each morning tastes of yesterdayness
and of dreams of betrayal.
I see you through all the places
we explored, the cities we toured to,
those roads now mapped on my palms
to be read like horoscope,
un-do-able.
Come what may,
I shift from where
You were my way in between
the rights and wrongs
to some way in between bereft
and the reaches you never left.