Where did it hit you first?
Your neck or your heart?
Were you as old as I am today...
in decades of confusion,
ages of nonconformity?
In pain?
I pleaded with god that night
although I did not believe in him...her
And then when you came home,
I saw him with you.
We had not touched base in a quarter of a century.
We came close when I ventured into your non-celestial territory.
The earth around your grave had lost its sanctity.
Some even said it had turned into a 'terrorist hotspot'...maybe.
My heart gave out, the coward it was.
But then, who has time for sideline requests from me?
Like when Leena passed and I was under the mercy of family agenda.
So I could never kiss her kind face, a last time.
I think I remember what happened first.
Your neck almost broke.
Paulina's Dolma was too acidic.
I had secretly let her in on the pantry of spices;
her creativity almost took your life.
I remember holding your hand, in the ambulance,
uttering the first tired words that came to my panicked brain:
"It will be OK."
It was for a while.
We stopped talking
as I started to try
to carve-out a meaning for my existence.
That too fell from me, in the midst of life's semantics.
I never paused to call out your name.
I was scared.
I love your name. Every night.
When I read the Fatiha for your eyes.
I think I know what will happen first, with me.
It won't be my brain.
It lacks sufficient energy to extinguish itself.
My heart will somehow self-implode.
_________________________________________
For my beloved father.
