Paper Rainbow Birds

Living their lives in ignorant bliss,
their vision straight and narrow.
Woken by touch of destiny’s kiss
and tip of Cupid’s arrow.

Him a dreamer of type and code
from a land strange and far.
Her a dancer of a tribal mode,
and an artist of highest par.

Cautiously they probed for intellect
revealing a matching mind,
finding upon delving deeper that
their interests intertwined.

They spoke of life, love, art and beauty.
Of train rides in the winter.
Of movement, privilege, dance and duty.
Of travel Interstellar.

As they shared their regrets and joys,
commonality was found
amidst space cowboys and robot toys
and adventures outward bound.

Coffee shop, a dance, a concerto —
they met a bunch of times.
But their temperaments did not go
together as did their minds.

Yet through their letters and their writing
unique friendship had been wrought.
For its promise and traits redeeming
they gave it another shot.

What then followed was a blossoming
the like they had never seen:
from Haverford to Northern Liberties
and everything in between.

At the peak of their conversation,
when everything seemed just fine,
came disbalancing their equation
tragedy of closest kind.

Between changing jobs and homes anew
their rhythm was disrupted.
The delicate thread that bound these two
was severed and corrupted.

He tried pulling her back, have some fun
with musical comedy.
It only made her angry, someone
that she didn’t want to be.

Fixated on the idea of
making her happy again,
he pushed too hard, so she pulled out
and that was the very end.

Having hurt one whom he loved so much
he recused himself in shame.
Waiting weeks for cooling down and such,
he appealed to her in vain.

After losing sleep and forty pounds
and forgetting how to eat,
for two thousand miles he flew around,
climbed more than a thousand feet.

On top of Mt. Sanitas he sat
with a paper rainbow bird,
and wrote to her in a letter that
which need be said but not heard.

A mistake which she could not forgive
and he could not forget.
By penning this final missive
he broke the cycle of regret.

Now they live their separate lives
in staging and production.
His yogic mind wouldn’t ever drive
her hips of mass destruction.

Cruel fate gave them a taste of
that which could never be.
It would indeed have been a waste of
a Virginian Wonanee.

Though the fabric frayed and colors ran
the mixing of these two dyes
left a kind of after-taste that can
linger without goodbyes.

Shall the twain ever meet again,
that we may never discover.
Tragic, since she once loved him plain
in ways he’d never loved her.

As Fall nights melt into chilly dawns
and cold December sunrise,
the other’s misty moon sets upon
their own personal night skies.

~ Terence Tuhinanshu, November 2015.

Although minimal and unenlightening, a commit history of this poem can be found on GitHub.

Special thanks to Amber Harris, fellow poet and true friend, without whose advice and guidance this poem would not be in its current form.