Your soul has left this house. (Loss poetry.)

Your soul has left this house.

I see this.

I felt it a few days or weeks ago.

It just suddenly became obvious, like a blatant and self-understood fact.

*

I don’t know where it went.

But the plaster has started falling off the walls in a few secret spots; the paint has started peeling off the entrance door. The smell has changed. The linoleum suddenly has new  tears and holes.

The walls have slightly darkened.

There are cobwebs and dust, growing at a much faster rate – I’ve never bothered cleaning, was your presence keeping them at bay previously, like a lively soul inhabiting the body protects it from decay?

*

Now somebody else has to inhabit this house, inherit it, buy it, or it will decay. I sense this voyage coming.

*

Actually, your soul has left this house just like a little more than six years it has left your body.

I saw the same thing: a subtle, sudden welling up of of steam, and – evaporation.

Six years ago it was as if the air or space around you flickered for a moment, like a fata morgana in the heat. Then something dissolved, a bubble. I think I was the only one who wasn’t surprised that you died a few days later, when it was thought you are recovering and well.

It was painful.

I didn’t feel the pain then.

It spread out into years of surreal, puzzling dreams. They are over now.

I feel your soul has left your house.

It is not your house anymore – it is its own house now; it is open to me, or to someone who is willing to inhabit it.

*

Before this moment, I would have perceived that as a violation – it was your house, you were here. I’m not sure why it changed in literally an instant. I wonder if my mother would feel it, too.

*

A very, very slight aura of abandonment, perhaps decay, with a simultaneous quiet, shy hope or openness for receiving new life.

Indecision; vacillation; a moment of emptiness.

(Perhaps Japanese style emptiness, denoting both loss and potential.)

*

It is curious that it happened in a moment.

Where did your soul fly?

Are you trusting me now to stay here alone?

Does this mean my time here is also up, as you were previously protecting me?

Does it mean nothing, just a fact of nature; or of spirit; a natural movement in the rhythm and clockwork of nature spirits denoting – nothing specific?

 

(Letter to the other side is another piece about this house, same context.)