Name of person:
you.
Nature of bond:
the form has no box for this.
Duration:
one summer,
three monsoons,
seven unfinished conversations,
and one afternoon
that still refuses to die.
Were you lovers?
No.
Were you friends?
Yes,
but the form rejects incomplete answers.
Were you family?
No blood was exchanged,
unless you count
the time I bit my lip
to keep from saying
don’t leave.
Was there physical closeness?
Your hand on my back
during traffic.
My head on your shoulder
during fever.
Your fingers in my hair once,
absentmindedly,
like you were reading
a sentence
you did not know
I had written there.
Please specify category.
The clerk has gone for tea.
Please specify intention.
The clerk is not coming back.
Please specify whether this was romantic, platonic, sexual, spiritual, pathological, seasonal,
adolescent, codependent, culturally confusing, or otherwise.
Yes.
Please answer clearly.
Fuck you.
Please attach supporting material.
A bus ticket.
A voice note.
One photo
where neither of us
is looking at the camera.
The smell of petrol.
Two plastic cups of tea.
The shirt I never returned.
The joke no one else
can pronounce correctly.
My neck,
still turning
when someone says your name.
Did the bond end?
No.
Did the bond continue?
No.
Current status:
A locked room
inside a demolished house.
A country
no longer on the map
but still printed
wrongly
in my blood.
Final declaration:
I knew what we were.
The world didn’t.