On the Inherent Dichotomy of Goodbyes

By Karizma Ahmed

I think—no—I know

That the person who came up with the word 'goodbye' was a coward,

Hiding, gift-wrapping his sorrow in the face of time’s slipping inevitability.

Giving shelter to the palpable grief of ‘letting go’ under the comforting canopy of ‘having known’.

Now for the sake being original,

I too must add something of my own to this inherent dichotomy of goodbyes. A goodbye is an oxymoron.

It is an inconsistent conjunction of contradictory emotions,

That has blood on its hand,

It bleeds with the violence of yoking “good”, and “bye” together,

Because how can waiving off something you love ever be good?

If I may boast a little,

I haven't yet missed a train in my life,

And I spend about three hours a day in that necessarily evil.

But I think this is what a missed train feels like: A goodbye

It is feeling left behind, while it sails off and you just stand immobile, Quivering and panting from the rushed, failed, last-ditch effort to catch it. It is knowing that another one is bound to arrive,

But you still can’t get over the disappointment of having lost that one.

My inner being crumbles into a rolled paper ball of unexpressed feelings—fragile but having the potential to hit you in the face.

They tell me to keep moving forward, set aside the heavy anchor of unprocessed loss, Attempting to offer wasted consolations.

But who is going to tell these broken advocates of assured endings, That the tragedy of the world, is that it goes on.

Moving on is looking at a sea of people and,

Desperately searching for a familiar face.

It is nursing your foolish, overwhelmed heart,

To hold its quivering hand, and hug its racing, unsettled beats. And tell it that it's okay. It has to be.

I feed mine with the consolation that it was meant to be.

But a starved child can rarely make do with a stomach half-full.

I think—no—I know

That the person who came up with the word 'goodbyes' was a genius. Because there's no such thing as a 'bad-bye'.

When something ends, you want it to end well.

So that when a quiet reflection dawns on you many years later,

The nostalgia is of fondness and less of pain.

My heart is a hurt child still,

Sulking and mourning for what it desperately desires but can't have. But like every toddler, its tears dry up as fast as they come,

It makes do by replacing disappointment with distraction.

Moving onto better things is inescapable,

To embrace the privilege of experiencing affection in its full force,

Because the thing about love is that it is most felt when it is leaving.

To say goodbye is to kneel down against the prayer-mantle with a confession. It is tearing your heart open,

Grabbing your loved ones by the shoulders, sitting them down and

Letting them know that you love them, and you'll miss them.

I know each and everyone here walks on fault lines,

Treading with carefully measured steps—fearful of exposing themselves, revealing the better, more tender feelings of their hearts,

So I come armed with an offering:

An olive branch amidst the never-ending battle of ‘wanting to remember’, and ‘fated to forget.’

I don’t claim to be any wiser, but can raise my poetry as a toast to endearment,

Hold on tight to each other while you can,

Press the width of their smile, the twinkle of their eyes, the liveliness of their laughter, In the lines of your palm, so that they get inked with your destiny forever.

Indeed, goodbyes sounds like space, a one-way path,

But just because the destination has arrived,

It doesn’t mean the distance was never covered.