Category: ekphrasis

“Ella doesn’t live here anymore.” The old lady said. It’s not like I expected to see her. But the moment I knocked on that door, I felt a lump of stone in my chest. I asked anyway. Old habits were hard to break. Even after 10 years.

I’m sorry, I said. I asked if she left anything. Then I mumbled about time and lost objects. In hindsight, I was asking to be shooed away like a stray cat. Unbidden visitors are strange, yet there I was.

Of course I knew. Everyone in town knew. She went missing one day. Last they heard, she went for a run around the boulevard. Police never found her. Her family and friends searched for months. No crime scene, no body. Nothing. In my mind she left to travel forever. That’s what I’d rather believe.

“She left many things. I’ve put them away,” the old lady said. But from a narrow gap, she opened the door wider. She gestured for me to enter. It took me a while to gather myself.

And there she was. Her portrait on the white wall. My gift to Ella was my last memory of her. How images persist while people fade.

We live in a city punctuated by contradictions: From the lush courtyards and gardens of palace estates, to roads that inevitably take us to cobblestone streets and narrow alleyways. People thrive wherever they can, wherever that may be. Like my friend who has settled in a small flat behind the plaza near the Basilica. Lately I find myself visiting her there. But we rarely stay in. She’d rather take walks to affluent spaces that makes her feel free.

Spent from centuries of flight, he finally lets down his singed wings, takes a glimpse of what the world has become. With the light of Leo guarding his side, he was almost immune to the ravages of fire. One cannot help but turn black. Deep parts of him reduced to cinders with every waking loss: How love dies in our well-meaning hands. Of where to return after the ruin. That day, the sunrise burnt his eyes, just as the fires engulfed every city in the great fall.

There were days she could not get herself to look beyond the windowsill. Weeks and months have passed, she found no reason to reach out. Save for the rays of sunlight, she preferred to wall herself in. To build her world, she cultivated plants and flowers from abandoned lots. Took items people decided to throw away. She thinks, there must be a place for all those left behind. Still the quiet care despite the refuse of neglect.