After 10

Sithmi Adishka

My love for my cousins expired.

I knew the very summer it started to rot. When our ages had two numbers in them, instead of one.

It began with wanting hours to play together, Moved to wanting hours to talk together,

Then wanting to meet once a month, at the very least

To wanting to go home when we finally did.

Some of them are now living in parts of the world I can’t name; In cities, I haven’t seen With people, I'll never know.

Yet those summer days, They remain in my mind Like a stain, I don’t remember how I got.

I remember our teams, repeating the only jokes we knew. I remember every line, the sound of every laugh. I remember my ears hurting, when they screamed right next to me. We were telling stories, Laughing, sometimes snorting.

All these things still feel so close, And yet, like something that never happened at all.

I meet you now and you smile but don’t talk. You don’t reach out your hand to take mine; We don’t run to the open fields, Where it would be just us

I wonder what went wrong. I know what went wrong. We grew up. And I’m sorry that we did.

I’m sorry for what they tell me of you, For what you might have heard of me.

I’m sorry you don’t want me on your team anymore We played We played a lot, but it ended there.

I knew as little of who you were then, as I do of who you are now.

I am 20 now, But at 60

I doubt that everything I remember of you will exist at all.

The only proof we had of our days was, broken slippers and snapped branches. those are long gone.

If our old clothes are somewhere, I hope they smell like those days.

Like oranges and rain.

I hope they carry those feelings, Those I can no longer carry. After all, I’ve had to make room, For the new ones.

We are not sorry for the strangers we’ve become. We knew it would happen and we let it, Part of me thinks we wanted it. Wanted to be away from everything our parents told us, Rather be strangers than end up the way they all did.

I am glad we did become strangers. If we meet again, maybe we would finally get the chance to know each other. Not as family but as friends; As people with their own stories to tell.

Wherever you are, dear cousin I hope you are happy. I am too.

I wanted to tell you, I liked playing with you.