Hypoxia

Amidst the fog
rising above the knoll of memory
the call of a warbler often
brings back the summer when

all that started: my fumble with words,
gasps of breath, burning beneath the shirt collar
and your cruel laughs; i believe it was clearly
a case of scarce supply of oxygen to my soul,

When you snapped the lifeline
of further approach, the roller coaster ride
slipped off its rails, and i was flung into the air,
i was detained somewhere between a virtual tunnel

and real vacuum, till i became conscious
of your vanishing into the mundane; all that remained
was a plunge into existence without the diatomic gas,
the essential pomposity of love.