without having regrets. To saying you don’t need something

you wanted a while back. The one thing I had wanted was

your company. Then how cruel of me to say I didn’t need it

once you were here. Ungrateful and expensive too.

The quality of the morning had settled on your wrists

like dew on a road turned upside down. You were stunned

by the brazen smartness of my veins. My blood

sugar levels suggested I could be prediabetic.

Low key panicking, I made a dash to the bakery

where we first met. I found now in its place, there stood

a hotel. In the lobby, a man slapped me hard

on my back. Immediately he apologized for thinking

I was someone else, someone who had hurt him bad,

or someone dear enough to pass thwacky pain

into an old pleasure of recognition. People say

at a given instant, every face has seven doppelgangers

lurking inside the world’s industry of faces. A couple

of mine, I have seen myself. The first one puking

in the washroom of a bar, screaming leave me alone

to his friend. Another dozing on a metro while a toddler

alongside wagged a disapproving finger at him.

I couldn’t gather the ebullience to tap on either

of their shoulders, offer them the shocking

familiarity of my countenance. I could have had

my Spiderman-pointing-at-Spiderman moment.

I recall this missed opportunity on the verge of falling

asleep on a chair, my eyes tottering from an all-nighter,

facing my father on the hospital bed who has now started

knocking vigorously on the wall with his fists. He is testing

the neurons in his arms. He woke up last night

from an unwavering five-day long slumber.

It scared the shit out of us.