third quarter

it's a relief to find everyone has gone and i am talking to myself. perhaps this was how it should have been from the very first.

the year was drawn and has been quartered. we find ourselves entering the last one. there are too many rooms. we who are left could have one each could pass our days never seeing each other. we are already like that: hardly talking, each in our own time perilin and the many-coloured death, needing the other but surviving alone.

there are scabs in my memory. did my grandparents leave, never to return, after my wedding? why does my father's cupboard have a photo album of my grandparents at my taladeepavali? did they come back? was everything forgiven? who here is still lying? what is the objective measure of memory?

i have lost the will to pick at these wounds. i know i should because the illness has only retreated temporarily. i need to dig deeper search harder look inside but i am afraid i won't recognise it when i find it will move on and i will become incomplete.