He left her.
But she got herself another man,
Soon before the neighbours knew.
A handsomer one this time;
Though he didn’t know which tie went with which shirt,
He just knew how to make her feel good.
When each morning she got out of bed
To find the table so neatly laid.
He knew just the right amount of sugar and milk –
The coffee beans too, brewed to awe,
And when sometimes they ran out of them all,
He knew where the lemon grass grew.
Yet, in all the fine mornings and dinings,
She often found herself brooding.
Under all the newly carved smiles and cleverly done laughters,
Drawing aside the pale white curtains,
She whispers little prayers for her old lover –
To walk pass the window panes where once they stood,
To watch each year’s first snowfall and rain.
* * *
Oh how she dreaded waking up to the sound of pouring rain.
The lazy little raindrops at the end of every shower –
Reminded her of how after a raging dose of love and laughter,
Her old lover’d slowly disappear.
Sometimes at dawn but worse even,
Before the night was o’er and darkness lingered still.
This new man, he wasn’t any alike –
His arms’d stay through the storm and calm;
Until she pushed them away or slipped out of them slowly,
At dawn or even before the night was o’er and darkness lingered heavily still.
And yet, all she yearned for was
The dreadful feeling her old lover left her with,
Every time she woke to the sound of rain,
Pouring or dripping, loneliness seething.
Awungrinchon Khangrah