THE BARCODE

I wish we could stop it.

But friends too, 
do expire

Just like lovers do.

Then we find ourselves at the beginning, the hardest. 

Endings are expected. They are preempted. 

But no one tells you the difficultly of beginnings.

The discomfort of new things. 

New things you aren’t quite sure how to handle yet.

So many unanswered questions as we stand before the unknown.

Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity they said,

But curiosity killed the cat and we are tired of dying,

at the beginning,

every time we have to smile again.

Tell the same story, the same jokes again.

Where do we find the strength?

Turning yourself into a folktale,

re-telling your stories time and time again 

and every time you impress a stranger with your spectacular nature

you wonder why your former companion had to leave.

Will they re-tell the stories right 

or have they forgotten overnight?

Will they lie and say you weren’t right 

when in fact they were the ones that came with an expiry date, 

stamped on their necks to mark their manufactured lies;

I will be there for you 

This isn’t Central Perk, we were never friends!

Why can’t we get people like we buy milk, 

select one from the shelf, anyone, 

because they are all the same anyway,

slightly different but it’s still milk at the end of the day,

milk that will go bad after a couple of days 

some don’t even last long enough to make ice cream, the best cream.

Why can’t we slap a bar code on them,

scan them, learn the truth about them, 

in black and  in white,

before we take them home, 

read in between the lines,

find out if we can afford them,

if we need them or just want them.

Perhaps these bar codes will carry a memory of you

So that they dare not forget you were true.

The best they ever had,

Will ever have.

Don’t fall for the lie,

that stars align,

because even they fall too.

Humans, they come at random, they hurt at random, they leave at random.

The best you can do when the next person comes, is to try again. 

So I take a deep breath and pray I never cry again. 

I talk with them.

Tell them it is spelt with a double 'q' and not a 'k'

It is pronounced Ruqqaiya like my dad wrote on my birth date.

If they must leave, let them leave with one thing,

To spell and say my name with the right zing.