how to love if not by remembering

the smell of peaches remind me of you 

bachelors, third semester,

your first bottle of perfume

i love you because you are

the smell of mint cigerettes 

on a cold afternoon, and how

when the dusk turns that dark blue

it is you and I sharing a cup of tea

in the kitchen, new lights,

and you cried for me

and when i got recommened  Dostoyevsky 

how to tell them i read it in your voice

and when i got to certain segments

i could only remember your tangents, your noise

(sorry Fyodor, meek is my memory

i only remember what my love has narrated to me)

i sit with your 15 year old self

someone you forget so very often

she softens at the thought of you

growing, leaving our hometown,

finding love, losing hope, making one for yourself

i tell her, she's doing better now

how to love if not by remembering

for now, are we so far apart

feels like yesterday

when you were just a rickshaw ride away

now we're stuck in towns that

do not know how to be kinder

well i survive because you loved me

and i remember why you prefer mom jeans

and birds aren't so much a marvel

though they are a sight to see

they're a wonder because

they remind me of you

then i remember how you used to love me.