Send off

I saw him shut down; He put a barrier in front of him. Slowly he slumped on the sofa he was sitting on. He wasn't smiling he just stared at me bewildered.

Before he left for some country to work I surprised him with a poetry reading of the peoms I know he would love -- Poems by Neruda, E.E. Cummings et al. He was taken aback by the surprise and to think that his family and most of his friends were there witnessing the surprise gift I organized myself. I had one of our friends play the piano while the three others read poems before me.

I stood there hands trembling, I ignored everyone except him. I felt that I was just in that room with only him listening to my voice. I read two poems by E.E. Cummings one was to tell him that I still have his heart with me and the other was accepting that I should let him go -- out of the country to work and out of my romantic life to bask in someone else's glory. I was really stopping myself from crying that time and there were occassional lumps in my throat. But I finished the two poems off without embarassing myself.

I wanted to do that regardless of what anyone would say. I didn't mind the criticisms I would soon find out after doing that. I just knew that time that I wanted him to have something to remember, a very small but meaningful gesture, before he stays for a while in a country he's not familiar with.

Today I just reminisce that scene and I believe that I can do better things and that I want to someday say that I am a person who wanted a life, not a normal one, that I can be remembered for.