How many memories can my mind retain?
I have seen clouds up close. They are really filled with nothing in them. Their undulating form of fluff is made of my memories of you. Their white comes from my happy thoughts of you. The greys are my desolation, the black, a drape of your absence, falling like velvet and drenching my soul.
Such magnificent shapes you make, scattered through my once clear blue sky.
Cheruvally Appachi (The aunt from Cheruvally) is about 86. She looks just as beautiful as I remember her from the time my grandma was alive a decade ago. Yesterday, we met at the wedding of one of her grandchildren.
As I hugged her, I could feel her tears drench my bald head and creep through my shirts collar. Her tears would not stop. Nor mine.
Great Aunt of mine, I want you to know, do not grieve for the time that is no longer there, for we shall meet again. This one was as your favorite grandnephew, the next will be as your son.
Once a wise grey owl perched on a large sullen tree in a garden in ruins. The butterflies hushed their wings, the snakes crawled for a while like snails and the wind that was already tired from all its windiness, screeched to a stop.
The owl would now look to the right and then look to the left. It would turn it's furry head all around without a rustle. It's bright golden eyes pierced the low light dusk falling like a shround on to an unloved body.
When the night finally drenched this forgotten garden in its mossy grey, the wise owl screeched a chilling shriek, flapped it's giant wings, and through a tear in the fabric of the universe, escaped into another dimension.
Autumn brings in memories of muted grey and flying ash. Memories of fallen leaves gradually letting go of their greens.
Autumn paints itself on a desolate canvas.
It is that season wherein your eyes draw back your tears into itself. It is that season when your hope falters and your faith waivers like the last of the twigs holding on to some imaginary leaf.
Such is wretched misery of this waiting, it transforms your soul into a refugee. You grab on to made up memories from some imaginary springtime and trudge through your life believing that your world is this bleak canvas, and you that grey tramp ploughing your soul through limbo.
No. It is not a nightmare, for it is not night yet, just the dreary day draped in grey.
There are no dreams, for to dream, you need to get to sleep, and you rarely get to sleep on days that stretches for years and is blatantly grey.
But when the first set of silly shoots find their way through sunken craggy gnarly wood, we drench in its first shameless showers and hurry to erase memories of Autumn from our minds. Green replaces grey. Hope that springs eternal, brings back faith, brings back love. The only hint of Autumn is in the hurried glances that we keep giving our loved ones. It is in the sudden desperate hugs and fierce embraces. The fear of draught scalds your soul, singes your being. Just once is one time too many.
Do not ask me why I miss you. That answer would come to me, eventully. Some day sometime in the future I will find myself not thinking about you. And in not thinking about you, I will end up thinking about you just like that.
All stories are my stories, but I am not my stories. I am yours. When we are older and our world is quieter than it is now; I will be in those intriguing tales that your heart spins to give you company.
Do not ask me why I miss you. That answer would come to me when it comes to me. Why hurry?
