Favorite Song

She looks a little pale

Her hands are too veiny

Her hair seems to have lost girth

I wonder if it’s because the weather is rainy.

She sits right across from me

Still as if holding her breath

I don’t know why it’s so unsettling

Is this real or the breakup’s aftermath?

How have you been? I say

Trying to distract myself from her constant gaze

I can’t afford to memorize her face again

A face it took years to erase.

We laugh at our infinite memories

We cry thinking of the day we parted

She hears me, reacts to everything too

But I sense her smile is halfhearted.

We feel hungry and get something to eat

I get her a mojito, I knew she loved one

She passes me an ashen grin

So wry, the feelings seem absolutely none.

We wind up as I joke about her

About how she looks almost lifeless

She laughs this time with all her heart

A laugh I remember being priceless.

I had terminal cancer, she says out of the blue

The world goes silent and I can hear the stares

I think it’s late we should get going

She says as I see her getting up from the chair.

I catch her on my way out

I stop her for a bare moment

How come I never knew this at all?

Why were you alone in that torment?

Oh I wanted to but there was never a good time

I was looking for the right moment and you had problems of your own

Plus I realized we had stopped making sense

I realized it was time to go back home.

What issues are you talking about?

Were they so crucial that I couldn’t see?

Put your love aside and think about it

After all these years, why do you still see me?

My eyes go blurry and I stand there like a ghost

As the man next to me says what’s taking me so long

I scatter as I realize you’re not next to me anymore

Oh nothing, I just heard my favorite song.