Something useful

Tell me then, promise me
That we'll meet.
Some other time, and place.
In another dimension, where we're all purple,
I don't really care,
but promise me.
After all is said and done
and our choices laid out
like so many stones
that we stumble over,
blindfolded.
But all you do is sigh
and my knuckles are so white
gripping this really old fashioned phone
that my father still keeps, you know the kind I mean,
the ones you waited months or years for, before the damn telephone department
let you have it, like it was a pot of gold, or something-
I love it, because it goes tring-tring
and doesn't interrupt your day with
a synthesized voice breathing something tarty, and when you hang up,
it has a very satisfying 'click', it's unambiguous and done.
And yes, to let go is something
nobody taught me. They never
teach you anything useful.
It's all angles and topography
and statistics, not one thing
that can teach you how to say
goodbye or make sense of sorrow,
and really, how do they send you out into the world
like this, so fucking unprepared.
If I had your child, I would teach her.
So I breathe in your sigh, taste it with my tears,
these little things I do,
that make no sense to anyone, and if I let go,
what do I do, if I let go,
and I want to be twelve again,
dreams behind my eyelids, and scuffed black school shoes,
scrunching the leaves of the neem trees
that line the road home.