Psychology Unrewarded

Under dim moonlight she wrote a song for him
Her pen provoked at the mighty mention of his name
As it fell, tumbled on the cold floor
Of her barren room.
She mumbled the name as she did when alone
And clutched her chest while it
Expanded, shrank and back again
In rapid succession.
Seconds whirled away with the memory
Of bitten nails, the desperate sighs
That never reached their clandestine destination anyway,
Like the final draft of the song composed
For him.


She bent her fingers to trace
The lovely letters of his name.
That ink stain marked the stretched absence,
The absence that never left the damp,
Echoing cavern of her bones, her within.
No breath was caught, no warmth lingered
Except at the sudden tinker of his name
Whence she jumped and sat once more,
Silent and incomplete evermore.


Sheets of paper, boxes of gel pens,
Countless clockworks drifted past her listless eyes
And unrelenting age.
All these did not suffice the syllables
Of that lovely name.
They lay crumpled and heaped, brimming the rim
Of the trash bin in the corner of her
Sad, quiet, breezeless room.


Underneath the ceiling her mutters echoed
And frolicked here and there,
Irresponsive of the blisters caught in her fingertips
And the persistent immobility of her worn-out wrists.
The sounds continued, burdened, locked away they seemed
In a hole
And only went back
To the chattering, repeating lips of hers.


She called his name in the dark
She called his name night and day
She called his name until she trembled,
Her jaws stuck, her tongue dry.
She called his name when slumber
Touched her at last in her fatigued unconsciousness.
She slept with his name inside her mouth.
The light bulb was switched on
Her eyes visibly wiped of yesternight’s tears.


She forgot what it sounded like to have the doorknob turned
She was no longer familiar with the wind beyond her room
She forgot what the mirror had use for
And her face wrinkled 4 years faster.
She got hold of logic then as it returned
In lieu of protracted lapse, fresh from the grave
She learned that
She forgot the face behind that lovely name.