Never say bye

It takes me back you know, to a faraway kitchen, in the village of fireflies and paddy fields,
Where the drunken old bard of a river, gurgles and tumbles, maniacal, beside the sober rubber trees, 

On an archaic wood fire, a spice-laden broth simmers, producing billows of charcoal smoke,

Flushed with the tongue-tingling essence of curry, ginger, dry roasted coconut,

Of garlic, cloves and cinnamon sticks, of shallots and of coriander-cumin mists, 

So dressed up, the smoke rises, cloaking her charred-wooden perspiration with flourish, 

Perched in the stalemate of the tiled roof, she spots the yellowed square of dusk-en glow,
Lighting up the browned abyss of the ceiling, the window glitteres, beckoning,
Unsuprisingly, the smoke meets only glass, withered hopes of passage into light, dissolve in silken threads,
Wisps of its former self, floating, thwarted and broken, into the deep beyond the cobwebbed door,
In that memory, I see the beauty of heartbreaking longing, of silent depair, of doggone tiredness,
the dried flower, the shadow of a vibrant life, tucked between crumbling pages,
the creaky boat, with the aching oars, that have no hope against the storm,
the wings of the butterfly, devastatingly wiped out by the rescuing fingers' touch,
the lonesome White owl, unheedingly hooting at the cloaked, elusive moon,
the old brass key, in a heavily lined hand, bereft hopes of meeting its only lock,
the hardy tear, that fought will and worth, to escape the melancholy of the eye,
The narcissistic candle, burning itself to a smouldering puddle, all for the flamboyant flame,
There is something to be said for the hopeless love, for love-drunk hope, for the marriage of both,
There's something to be said for the tenderils of scent, in the withered leather of a watch strap,
Of the yellowed pages of a children's book, slouching at their aged spine,
Of the washed out, bleached-blue, well-worn, threadbare of a slept-in shirt,

A hopeful nostril longingly wanders the surface of all that i have left of you,
Unwrapping, once more, the faint and fleeting frangance, of charred-wood smoke.