Here, they can meet.

My greatest loss and my greatest love come together. Here, I talk to both of them.

It’s strange to see me in your life outside myself. The book I annotated and gifted to you sleeps in your tote bag that you carry with you everywhere.

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You’re not around this summer and you weren’t around the last one. I am pushed into a new room every morning; the door behind me locks itself. I can barely hear your voice through them.

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I think I would’ve emerged into another world entirely had I jumped on board with you that silent night. That train would’ve carried us both to that world made for you and me and we would’ve lived there together for an eternity. Too bad I just stood there, and watched you leave. Too bad.

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What they don’t tell you about death is how final it is. Every other grief has a possibility of repair. My father can wake up tomorrow and miraculously decide to be gentle with his hands. You can never return. I understand a lot about this world but I don’t understand how that is possible. Everything I write makes a turn around the truth (I miss it like magnets repelling).

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When I folded your laundry I could see the memories pressed between the folds. The T-shirt you wore when we went for movies. Sometimes you can have something and not realize you’re out of the time when you were wishing for it so desperately. I’m embedded in the fabric of your life, my dear. You wrote a poem about wildflowers once but I don’t think you ever mentioned them being blue. When we visited the art gallery, you wore a flowery shirt. I bought a t-shirt with little flowers on it last week. I’m wearing it now. The two are touching. You can’t even tell the flowers apart because they’re all blue.

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I didn’t understand how people could just forget that someone is dead until I did. Until I returned home on my sister’s birthday; the living room crowded with balloons and glittering ribbons and strings of light, just the way it would have been had you done it. At the doorway, I thought you had done it. Why wouldn’t I? Once, you taped the balloons directly to the walls instead of using strings. You were upset about the paint peeling off the walls afterwards; would prefer those holes in the paint to the holes in my heart. A bare room would have been better to walk into because then I wouldn’t have believed you to be awaiting my return. I could live in that doorway now if it means I would get to live in that belief, never step into the room where they kept you after you died. I didn’t know this would happen. I was always as foolish as I was in the doorway. I thought death was something that happened to birds until it happened inside our living room.

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Here, I can take my lover by hand and bring her to my grandfather.

It’s late November, but not too late. It’s a little windy and there is still time. We can walk into the cave of his room together. I can spell out her name for him because he hasn’t heard it before and wants to know what it means; it means pure. She’s a good friend, dadu. She’s from Kerala. Yes, have you been there? You’ve been there? It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it? She’s studying here now. She can play the violin.

Here, I can even tell him who she really is without any repercussions in the real world. We can talk about how gentle she is. It cannot be wrong if she’s so gentle, right? You love her too, right and you don’t think it’s wrong? Did you love anyone at seventeen? Do you understand what I mean when I say I can drop my heart into her open hands and let her take it out for a long walk, unbothered?

You’re the only one in this house I can tell this to because you’re not in this house anymore. Here, I can redeem my third largest regret. I can make him look at her face and make her look at his; they can appreciate the lines that carried me from his arms to hers. We can go for a walk. He can show her around, talk about the local flora. Or we could just eat. You’d like to eat again, yes? I’d like to eat with the two of you together.

I can say anything here, see. Anything at all. Nobody in the real world will know. She can talk about college. she can sing something for you. You’d like that, won’t you? You can tell us about the other side if there is any at all. Do you want to teach her your favorite hymns? And oh, the flute; play the flute for us?

We can do anything here. I can say I love her. I can even say I love you too.

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Haven’t told this to anyone but I think my home died when you did. I come home but I never come home. I think, surely I must have ended up in the wrong place, for he is not here, and when I go where he is, I will be home again. Wish I could call you home for a day or two, you know? You could tell me where it is you live now. In my dream last night, you sat in your bed watching an obnoxiously loud TV programme, clearly alive and healthy. My mother’s hair was thicker. Hope that was a glimpse into your world, wherever it is now. Hope you’re eating somewhere, even if you don’t have to eat for sustenance anymore. Know you didn’t mean to take my home with you, must’ve slipped into your pocket accidentally. Can you visit one day to give it back, please? Just a weekend where I come home and you’re inside with everyone else, peeling cucumbers on the floor, clearly alive and healthy eating a bitter slice so nobody else has to bite into it; can you give me that?

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I think I always remember the worst of times. More than the sky that wasn’t a sky at all more than the most stars I have seen even with you in one place that weren’t stars at all I remember how disgusted you were with the dirty rainwater in your shoes as we walked back from the planetarium. I remember how we were stuck on the wrong side of the muck trash stinking shrouding darkness and everything we wanted promised an existence beyond it. How you leapt across first to show me the way, then looked back. I remember the sodium yellow lights and your face a sun glowing underneath them. I’m glad we still have them around. If death was like that, I’d jump over the muck again.

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They were all talking about you at your funeral I remember, they were all talking about you and you were nowhere to be seen. Don’t know what to do with the mangoes this year, don’t know why the birds haven’t finished them all already. The tree should have stopped bearing fruit altogether, but it’s heavy again.

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After you left me alone, my world was so quiet I could hear the lights blinking out and the sparrows outside falling asleep. But I know how to cover this distance. I know the pull push push; three doors between your kitchen and you.

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It’s strange to see myself outside of your life. I take a shower in the downstairs bathroom; stare at the aquamarine tiles bluer than my grief. You didn’t live long enough to bathe in their embrace.

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When I bury a moth with you, long dead and dry, my first prayer in years comes to me. I think of it as I cover it in soil: I pray you find a love as soft as the one that buries you. I hope we all do.