The finality of nostalgia

This city engulfs the bluest of the skies with its towering skyscrapers in the name of evolution, 
an endless marathon to perfection till there remains not a single proof of flaw, 
a flaw—from which we’ve once surfaced, 
a memory paradox that we, too, instill within ourselves in hopes to achieve perfection. 
A perfection so sickening that it, too, refuses for me to write a verse, 
without scraping it off of its existence without mercy. 
but poetry never was, nor ever should be, a mass manufacturing of perfection,
rather a recollection of the old, the nostalgia of what once was, 
the inherent flaws that each of us bear in the deepest parts of our memory junctions. 
Flaws that once acquainted us to the chaos that is love, 
and the very same flaws that drove us away from it. 
the absolute paradox of memories that refuse to be erased, yet drives us into the very extinction of it the moment we attempt to recall a particular name from the distant past.
The finality of nostalgia was never a failed attempt at remembrance, 
rather, a total disillusionment of it never existing in the first place. 
it happens slow, without you ever taking a notice as to how perfectly
you have forgotten what you thought you, too, wanted to forget, 
until the finality of nostalgia stands at your doorstep as an irrevocable act of letting go, 
an irreversible emptiness planted within the flawed canvases of our deluded minds.  
Until you are faced with the truth that you never really wanted it erased, 
and yet, the finality of nostalgia, is after all, as merciless as this decaying city—constructing sky-high walls all over your disruptive mind, battling to fabricate an entire identity that knows no flaws, 
repeating the same old errors that once cost you your own self—isn’t this what you asked for? 
Tell me, isn’t this what you wanted? Did your flaws not make you weak? 
Why do you grieve, my child? Tell me, why do you resist your own act of oblivion? 
Because, 
it is once again July, and I have accidentally caught a glimpse of the blues of the skies,
battling to resurface above my fogged up memory-jars that I’ve kept locked up somewhere in the attic where all my dysfunctional selves reside in secret, 
a haunted doorway I dare not visit lest it should corrupt whatever that remains of my flawless identity,
A truth that I refused to settle in to set myself free, 
until the finality of nostalgia had to knock on my doors, and say, the second death now stands between you and them. 
Because, 
It is once again July—and the falsified identity that my mind had been trying to assemble over the leftover wreckage filled with pitch-black smogs and voided haze—seems to be falling apart. 
And if not entirely, I remember once again, enough in bits and pieces, 
to let the truth settle in my heart this time instead of resisting what it’s been wanting to say all these years. 
“You never really wanted to forget, only to not be ruled by your shame, 
You never wished to erase each encounter you’ve ever had, for it would mean erasing yourself, 
You only wanted to preserve it enough to remember what it cost you to become this version of yourself that you are today, 
Not to extract every flaw, every shame, every bit of the experience you aren’t proud of 
out of your bruised skin, 
but learning to live alongside them without being reigned by the fear, wanting to grow roots within you. 
not to rebuild over the ruins, but around it. 
The finality of nostalgia, after all, is not the final act of remembrance, 
it is rather a recollection of what remains after all the forgetfulness, 
with a sense of gratitude calming your raging heart—thank you, for stopping by, 
and for leaving behind the encounters that made us into who we were meant to become. 
The finality of who we are, 
and who we refused to be in the face of relentless battles with self. 
Maliha Tribhu is a postgraduate in Marketing from the University of Dhaka, currently overtaken by the search for self.

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