Veiled
18th February 2023

Squirrelling plastic bags of clothes and mementos into the car, in anticipation of an escape, back to your childhood home.

Apparitions moving through your life you don’t recognise, but which must somehow belong (as they are here), “that girl that looks like my daughter”.

Learning your mother, whom you loved more than anything in this world, and older brother, have passed away, or having the question avoided, twenty times a day.

Feeling sad, frustrated, and disorientated, as you are unable to grasp or know anything, and vaguely understanding why.

Constantly mentioning it is time you got going home, but finding out this is where you live, “oh no not that again”.

The cups of coffee you habitually prepare all day, going cold, straying their way around the house, the caffeine that gets through on occasion keeping you up till three in the morning.

The joy and meaning of life disappearing bit by bit, useful no more there is just getting by, and trying to make sense of a confused complicated world.

Overdoing it during the day to the point where you sit hunched over your dinner plate trembling, trying to hold it together, looking a little like this the end,

…because this is what the end looks like,

this is what they mean when pose questions on quality-of-life,
what it looks like when your faculties have departed, but you have stayed on,

the world continues revolving, disregarding you as you move alongside of it, incapable of engaging,

you see the ‘something’s going on, as through a veil,
you are a recipient,

and in the wings, a something else unspoken, and unknown,

…bee-lining it’s way,

…towards you.

Thar Desert,
Rajasthan, India