Loving a ghost

Image from Unsplash by Steve Adams

"each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence."

- Mary Oliver, "When death comes"

For sometime, I've been saying your name in my mind, sometimes, not even saying it. It appears and I see it's you, sauntering like a sound or a note, changing form to the meaning of your name. The object you're named after and you change places. I am reminded of names from Ali Akbar Khan's album "Garden of Dreams"-- each English name of the Ragas conjuring an image by itself. I see a shell by the sea, I see a snail, I hear the sound of waves and conch-shell during evening prayers. I am filled with silence.

As much as our abilities, our inabilities decide the course of our lives. It's a lesson I learn slowly and sadly. I learn that if we cannot be fully present as life happens, we live in our memories with our longings and regrets. And I try, I try to live in the present and reach out and cross great distances of time and space so you and I can learn to see each other and live in present time. But in the act of reaching, I realize I am reaching for what was and not what is. What is, is only for me-- fragments of the past mixing with new understanding and old desires to take shape and create a ghost of you. A ghost that I will cherish and love until time disintegrates it.