When you died I did not know where you had gone. I could not comprehend your absence, the reality of your non-being, or the fact that you would never be coming home again.
I stumbled through empty rooms and corridors, clutching at the white-washed walls, crouching in dark corners, crying out for you… “Where are you my love? Where are you?”
It’s a question which still troubles and confuses me. A question which I cannot answer. I look for you everywhere. And sometimes I find you.
A butterfly
A stray hair
A white dove
A girl at the beach
Fairy lights and fireflies
A long-legged spider
Moon shadows and scented candles
A song-bird in the morning
A strange cloud formation drifting over the sea with the faces of angels and cartoon sharks
A pink glowing sunset
A delicate blue flower
A sand beetle toiling heroically through the endless desert in the midday sun
Sequined t-shirts
Crazy socks
Wild hair
Feral children
A lazy cat sleeping in the shaded street
A hazy mountain which shimmers like a ghost and sometimes vanishes completely and returns in the morning wrapped in a black shroud
The wind in the courtyard and in the trees and in the bell tower
Your fingerprints on the window pane
Joss sticks
Angel cards
Distant thunder
A cup of tea
Ten thousand cups of tea
A fried egg roll
Cream slices and hot doughnuts
Vegetarian toad-in-the-hole
These fleeting moments of recognition and remembrance bring you back to me once more. Echoes of eternity reflected in the ephemera of day-to-day life. Each moment at once unique, yet played out again and again forever. As if for the first time.
16 July 2019