In Memoriam
Inspired by Amar Kanwar’s The Sovereign Forest Nur’aishah Shafiq
i. To be whole again The judge refused to accept the evidence of his murder. She dreams of purgatory.
So, he is neither dead nor alive.
The half-life of her love,
straddling the nebulous
border of ghost and breath. Incompleteness haunts her. She always sees him coming, until one day she doesn’t anymore.
I dream she is me. Every day I wake alone in this new world old world, quarantine; fearing the invisible sickle carving lungs—
fluid gathers, death by drowning.
I wept for you my almost-heart, at the crossroads between our homes. You, my every unlived love, premature goodbye. Beyond that half-world, we were happy
Before that half-world, they were happy.
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