Prena Poetry

i wrote you letters
incase you ever wondered.
folded them so neatly
inside an ivory envelope
and pressed it to my chest.
i was eleven then.

i wrote you letters
on that slow summer in 2007
when you moved away with your mother.
i was fourteen
with a box full of letters i never sent.

then the next summer i turned fifteen
i cried for weeks
and never knew why.
dad left us in the following month.
we never spoke of him after that.

and after i celebrated my seventeenth birthday
in our dingy little living room
with a half burnt cake my sister made.

i quietly ambled out to the backyard
with a lighter in my craggy red jacket
and a heap of frayed papers
pressed under my arm.
i watched them turn into ashes
and vanish into the air.
i placed a hope,
a silly little hope i often find myself laughing at.
i hoped that maybe somewhere these ashes
will brush past you on a windy day.

now i am at a bar i don’t know
scorning about my 9 to 5 job
with one hand holding a Jim beam bourbon
and another
holding a stranger’s apathetic fingers.

but incase you are still wondering
and there’s a reality somewhere.
i am still writing letters to you
in my head.
i am still there telling you about my family,
writing to you about the books i don’t like
and about random habits i picked from you.

incase you ever want to know
i loved you in every word i wrote.
every letter i burned.
every ivory paper.
i will awlays do.

[ picture taken inside of ambuluwawa tower, srilanka ]