It is funny if you think of it,
No, really think...
I feel as if my door is alive,
That I can hear it breathe,
I can hear it heave, creak, move, complain,
I can even hear it listening to me...
When I sob, it listens,
When I listen, it converses,
Like wind chimes, it shudders with life in the quietest of moments,
Unexpected...
Like a secret gushing out from its secret place...
When I shut myself away from the world,
I shut myself in with it...
And in those awkward moments when I find myself alone,
Shut in or shut out...
I know I am not,
Because it’s always there,
A few feet away,
Listening, a pulsating silence that grows,
Till I wish I had a way,
To shut myself off...
(Without a door, of course!)
He was lost to me, before even,
I knew I had lost him.
Under the white cover and grieving faces,
My grandfather lay still,
Bonier than I remembered him,
I was nineteen that summer I think.
Days before he left us in grief,
He walked more than six miles they said,
That strong a man at his ripe age,
Shaking with tears, I wasn’t sure if I should be proud or just let it be.
As I shed my tears, I did not know why I cried.
We had never been very close.
I was shy as any child could be, of a grandfather who rarely talked,
He was a man who never showed what went inside his head.
I wasn’t even sure if he liked me, his first grandchild (or perhaps his second, but that’s a different story!).
All I remembered was a beautiful kerchief,
He gave me years ago because I desired it.
On certain odd days, I can still feel its texture between my fingers, soft like silk,
A kerchief in which I wanted to sew beautiful roses before gifting him,
Like memories, so that he would remember me.
I still did not know why it was so important,
That he remembered me.
He never did get that piece of silk,
For the flowers I had sewn tore the material,
I was ashamed to hand it back to him,
Memories as torn and ugly as my impatience.
Years later when he left,
Without the gift that I had meant for him,
As I wept for a loss I had not yet grown to understand,
By his eternal bedside,
I remembered that I had forgotten to ask him if I had a place in his memories,
And if he would like to keep me in there forever...
