Matter of factly

 

he spoke
matter of factly,
as if stating the color of the sky
or the time on a digital clock
blinking 9:05 a.m.,

as if it were nothing...
a receipt,
a weather report,
a small stone dropped in a bottomless well.

his voice didn’t tremble,
didn’t go searching for the right word
like a hand feeling for a light switch
in a dark unfamiliar room.

he said it
the way people say
“take care”
when they mean
“this is goodbye,”

the way doctors say
“there’s a chance”
when they mean
“there isn’t much,”

the way we read
terms and conditions
and accept
what we’ll never really understand.

matter of factly,
like it had always been true
and we were merely
catching up
to the fact of it.

and I nodded
as if I, too,
were made of such calm certainty...

then went home,
opened every window
just to hear the world insisting
on being louder than his sentence,

and found myself
repeating it
under my breath,
trying to make it sound
like it mattered
less
than it did.

​

© Sreedhari Desai