If you forget me, then let it be thorough.
Let it be like pulling petals off the last flower I ever gifted you.
Not a single one spared to press between your pages.

Forget how my voice once sounded like home 
on days when you couldn't find one.
Forget the soft chair of my attention, 
how you sank into it like it has always been yours.

If you forget me, let it be a total eclipse,
dark enough that even the stars we named after each other are swallowed without a trace.

Forget that I didn’t flinch when you handed me the trembling map of 
your trauma and asked me to still love you.

Forget the poems I folded like secret letters and left on your pillow.
Forget the metaphor that compared your laughter to spring arriving early,
and the simile that said, you felt like a prayer answered in silence.

Because love, real love…isn't a song on shuffle.
You don't get to skip to the chorus and pretend the verses never happened.

So if you must forget me, do it with conviction.
Let the memory of us be a house that burned down and not a postcard you revisit when the weather inside your chest turns stormy.

And I…I’ll unlearn the language that once sounded like your name, wipe clean the margins where I scribbled you into meaning.

I’ll forget you, like waves, forget the names of the shores they once kissed.

I won’t just forget you.
I’ll forget the version of me that ever thought you were worth writing for.
And I’ll forget the softness of every poem I ever wrote!

- Neha Sharma