Things I never got around to asking

I always thought we had time to learn the mundane things. After all friendship such as ours muddled through the depths of our souls. I thought we would always have time to know the simple things about each other. May be by the time we would have been old, we would have finally gotten around to ask the stupid stuffs.

Now as your first death anniversary nears, I can’t help but wonder who would answer these unanswered stupid questions of mine?

Hey, what’s your favorite color? I recently heard from someone it is green. Is that true? How can I know so much and so little all at once? What’s your favorite city? Your mother told me that you used to say New York was your favorite city. Do you know I always wanted to go there. But now, I don’t think I have the courage to enter the city in which you have chosen to die. I have heard some of your friends went to the Central Park. I don’t think I can do that because I don’t think I’ll get closure there. I have never seen the Central Park lake and yet when I close my eyes at night I can see you struggling to take your last breath there. How is it possible that I know a place so intimately, a place I have never been to before?

Hey did you like staying here? Did you plan to go back to Bangladesh? Did you change your major? I remember you told me you wanted to change your major. Did you end up doing it?

You said you’ll see me on your next spring break. Hey, if you were alive, would you have come to see me? I really wanted to see you. I never asked you to come and see me before. You see, before last year I didn’t have a place I could call my own. But last year, I finally had a home. Of sorts. And I wanted to see you so bad, talk to you face to face. I wanted to hold your hands and say thank you for giving me hope.

Hey, did you ever you blame me? Was there anything you wanted me to do for you? I never told you this before, but you were the one of the two people in this world I would have done anything for. The other day when I told your mother this she asked me why I never said that to you. I couldn’t tell her then that I didn’t have a contingency plan for our friendship. I didn’t know there was a time limit. I didn’t know I would never get to say goodbye. I’ll always miss you. Know that, okay?

Your mother says it’s okay to talk to you even though you are not here. So these days that’s what I do. Hey, is that okay? Is it okay to not let go yet?

Broken Kaleidoscope

Hey do you know remember that day? That day, we spent hours looking through the Kaleidoscope making up stories of the future?

The other day while thinking I have nothing of you, I found that Kaleidoscope lying at a forgotten place. I picked it up and looked through the patterns until I had to look away from the memories that started to stare back at me. As I turned it around to lock it away once more, I saw the broken glass on the other side of the Kaleidoscope. How could it have a broken glass and yet keep making these mesmerizing patterns? Shouldn’t the brokeness distort the beauty?

Do you know, lately I have been thinking, I have become a broken Kaleidoscope myself. On one side I am broken along the fault lines – not shattered, but broken irreparably – while on the other I form patterns. All those who look at me see the beads arranged so meticulously, not knowing the cracks only mimics the glass. They don’t see that I am just a soul filled with broken mirrors, dazzling people by reflecting a sheer array of lights.

I have learned since your death that people see what they want to see. Nobody likes to focus on the fault lines of their soul. May be you didn’t either. I liked to think that when you looked through the Kaleidoscope that day, you skipped all the landmines of sorrow and focused on the distant future, a place where you would be happy. As for me, I never learned to look far in search of friendship. May be that’s why when I picked up the Kaleidoscope again, I focused on the cracks closest to the surface. I don’t see the intricate patterns of beads anymore; instead, I keep trying to find a piece of you to anchor myself again.

Grief’s Connotation

I can see how my grief makes you uncomfortable. You skirt around it as if it is contagious and you will catch it if you saunter too close to it. So sometimes you look through it, sometimes you ignore it.

And when I am talking about it, you throw me your disdain at my inability to move pass it. You hush my voice and my tears. You tell me to accept my reality and just live with it. It seems to me as if the faster I mourn, the faster you all can go on pretending nothing happened.

But something did happen. Someone, a pillar of strength, has disappeared from my life. It feels odd to go on without him. This grief is not about you. I am not mourning to make you uncomfortable. But I can’t grieve by your timetable or at your convenience.

This grief is not a backpack that I can leave at the side of the road. This grief holds love, holds memories. Saying his name is a chant. I am not handing you my burdens, but this is my wound to carry. This has shaped my edges, defined my tears, recreated a phantom of absence as if there is a space right next to me, where he should have been. This grief is all about that emptiness where dwells nothing but regrets.

This grief is not the last line of his chapter in my life, But a part of every other chapter of my life from here on.

Colored

Its a beautiful world, you have always told me that.

When I looked at your photography, I saw how vibrant the sky was, how dark the night could get. Sometimes looking through your lens, I forgot to think of the world without your colors. So then, why did you let your world become so dark?

Now when I look at the night sky or the ocean, I can’t help but wonder what you saw. Did you see an abyss, a whirlpool so strong it would sink you. Did you think there was no way out. Did you perhaps forgot to see the colors themselves?

I wonder if you didn’t find anything beautiful anymore, was there anything truly beautiful in this world? Were the colors a lie you told me, or a lie you told yourself? Was finding beauty just an act? And if an act, then who was it for? Surely you didn’t mean to paint my world in colors you couldn’t see?

I want to believe in beauty. I want to believe you wouldn’t lie, put up an act. I want to believe I knew you. But you have made a liar out of me already. And if I can’t even trust you, who would I rather trust? If the colors you have left behind are now changing, then how can I hold you as my only constant?

You know, it’s really hard to take paint off than to paint on. These days all I do is scrape the colors off, hoping I can start over with whatever is real.