Do you still miss her? She asked me.
No, I said.
So, are you looking?
No, I said.
She looked at me with her brand of annoyance.
I don't miss her not because I no longer remember her, but because she has latched on to me like an angry badger.
She is under the bedspreads, in my bathroom scrubs, in the way things are kept in my house, in the wardrobes and soap dishes.
She is in the long strands of hairs stuck silly to the legs of my chairs and intertwined with the filaments of my rugs.
She is my song list, my sense of time and my foundational definition sets of love and laughter and strength and vulnerabilities. She forms the fragment of my dreams, both broken and yet to be formed. She is the shimmering lines of gold crisscrossing the
Kintsugi of my life.
She is the red in my beetroot dishes, the tamarind in my Sambhar is from her. So is the spice of my fish curries and the chewy blandness in my steamed green brocoli.
She lives and breathes in places I occupy. On roads, on highways, on sands on beaches, and in the hot sun and boats and ferries and food. I can still taste her on my palette.
I don't miss her yet. Allow me time.
If I could do a Neruda, You would have smelt of summer roses And Autumn pine. There would have been sheer love Of the kind that causes our hearts to ache And loneliness bordering the divine. You would have had so many secrets Welling up as in a girly giggle And so few friends who would hear them all. I am no Neruda I can't paint you a Summer breeze Amidst this long winter chill.
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