A Grey Haze Over the Ricefields

A grey haze over the ricefields. The black cow grazing with her new-born calf, long-legged, unsteady— or trucks going past the high road: such things only claim that I am looking out in search of memory, not death. Those little kisses on our cheeks my long-dead grandmother gave me, or the soft dampness of my tears when my mother did not notice me from beyond the closed door of her youth. Today the dangling thread stops half-way down, where my hands cannot touch it. It's not that I wait for judgment. But at times I see a shadow move slowly over these, a shadow freed from the past and from the future, that contains the footsteps of that childhood so light I can only think of squirrels slipping in and out of the mango trees.