Nubilous (Word of the day)

I stand in the aisle with the spices on one side and the pasta and noodles

On the other and I turn around once and then again

And look at the list that is in my left hand along with my

Wallet and phone that then beeps and it's about what

A protest march, another death in a queue, gas shortages

I don't even know anymore if anything more could go wrong in this

Country that they've burnt to the ground with their corrupt

Incompetent don't-give-a-fuck leadership such a joke

But wait why am I in this aisle with the spices, do I need spices

I don't think so

A trolley first and a person follows, turning into this same aisle

He stops near the sauces, ah yes, I needed a can of mushroom

Canned food is safe, you can keep them for much longer

The canned food is in front of the sauces, mostly a luxury now

We mostly buy essentials, even though we can afford a few luxuries

There is so much guilt when so many can't eat or feed their families

When we are looking at an uncertain future where we may have nothing

To eat ourselves

Just money printed, valueless, the soil on land inherited

My mother walks up to me, complains about the price of fish

A kilo of something or the other

Almost what therapy cost two years ago

I need to go back, have the slime and fog and dust and cobwebs

In my head cleaned and removed

But for now, we walk away with our can of mushrooms

Some vegetables and a loaf of bread

She asks me about dinner and I shrug because talking

Is more than I can manage right now

souvenir

I keep things, this is why my room is a mess

Train tickets I bought to get to work

Pieces of paper on which grocery lists are written

Receipts from restaurants, movie tickets

Cards from friends and family

Coins from countries once visited

Envelopes with birthday wishes scrawled on them

Bo leaves, once green, now brown

Stones and seashells

I keep things, they clutter every surface in my room

And in boxes are all the things my grandmother made for me

Little crochet hearts and bags and pigs and squares

Orange, red, blue, purple, pink and green

Every chain so carefully stitched

I kept them all because these are things she left me

But today, I threw one away that had a stain on it

Burnt it before I could change my mind

A month ago, perhaps, I would have kept it

But today, out it went with a bag full of

Receipts and cards and pieces of paper and train tickets

Years ago, I threw away that one gift you gave me

I kept it with me, long after it stopped being of any use

But one day, when I was cleaning my room

I put it in with some other things in a garbage bag

It meant nothing to me, it has been so long since we last spoke

Recently, I was sorting through a box full of notebooks

Collected over the years, one of the perks of the job

They were taking up space and one has to be stingy with space

And love and happiness and other things

I flipped through the books in case there was something of value

And found myself looking for things I remember you writing

Doodles and words

All I could find was my own writing, barely legible, large, ugly, messy

I remember your writing being neat and small

But perhaps I'm wrong about this

I'm wrong about a lot of things these days

But in the trash those book too, went

And now, I feel like I'm one step closer to fully cleansing myself of you

There are journals I kept during those times

And truth be told, you make an appearance or two

But I can't seem to part with them

They remind me of times, not necessarily better

But definitely different

Strange because journals from more recent times

Notes taken down during therapy

They've all been thrown away

Funny, isn't it, how much distance there is between us

And yet how tied this memory of you is to me