I know, nothing is the same any more! Lips with that violet breath... today they are silent, shrunken and lying, and don't whisper as much as I need. They do not burn the eyes—they are cold, they look at me and don't even see me, they were the sun, and now they are frozen, as dark clouds come. And in the soul the dreams froze, the loneliness came, of course, you left, but your hands did not dare to wave goodbye to me. And what do I have left? Smiles— those sunny ones where you send me, they are here, on the left side of my chest, I keep them, all of them! For consolation—thoughtless, strange. I will hide them—deep, they are a memory, I breathed with them, so did you, you remember? Roses—a bouquet, I tore it off, and I am writing my farewell letter!
# Farewell-letter I leave behind the lamp unlit, the threshold unwashed, doorstep bare of flowers. Let no one find my shadow stretched across the courtyard stones— I have folded it carefully, tucked it into the folds of my saree. The tea grows cold in the cup, the bed remains unmade. I have taken with me only the silence between two heartbeats, a handful of salt from the kitchen, and the name you never called me by. Tell them I did not slip away weeping. Tell them the night asked for nothing, and I gave what it demanded. The key turns in the lock— not with the sound of closing, but with the sound of opening into a room where I was always meant to be. Do not search for me in the corners, in the spaces between words, in the margin of some half-finished letter. I am the breath you exhale and do not reclaim, the path the river takes when it has finally decided it belongs to the sea.
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