As You Lay Dying

“That’s what they mean by the womb of time:
the agony and the despair of spreading bones,
the hard girdle in which lie the outraged entrails of events.”
              ― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

It was three years ago that I was told you had hanged yourself.  Your family was waiting at the hospital; they had already agreed that you were brain dead.

I leaned over and placed my hands around your face.   I kissed both shuttered eyes, and pleaded softly but urgently in your right ear:  Please come back to me, please my Farzin come back, promise me you will, I am begging you to try and let me know you have found peace.

In the three years since you departed, there has been only stillness and silence.  At no time did I feel your presence, there were no unknowable sounds, no unspeakable revelations, no whispers nor sightings.  There was no sign of you.  I wanted ghosts, to look in the mirror and see your reflection, lucid and powerful dreams in which you embrace me, to hear a soft creaking of footfalls coming upstairs to me, or a sudden surge of warmth to drift over me, lingering only long enough for me to know you were with me.

If only you had paused long enough on your journey to allow me to catch up.

I think I know what you would say to me if you could;  My Gigi, you know everything is fleeting (عبور سریع).  Yes. I know Eshgheman, you now belong only to my past.  That chapter has ended, there is no more, close the book.

But……..

“the saddest thing is to be
a minute to someone,
when you’ve made them your eternity.”
― Sanober Khan