Written

/something from nothing/

I remember it well, your aversion to 

the finality of ink - a fondness for the

erasability of pencil. Pardon my 

saying so, but even then, you carefully

crafted a scribble meticulously illegible. 

The studious eyes glancing, curious spies,

bewildered by the evasive English...

Anaemic little letters, shrivelled up and

dry, their shy proclivities; like escapee 

POWs caught in the spotlight, trying to 

flee - finding the darkness... surer terrain. 

*

What I am yet to reconcile: 

Did the prospect of being understood 

terrify you? Each indecipherable 

character a scornful expletive - just

a litany of curses. Or (I linger as I 

type this) did you want us to labour,

graft... Did you need us to diligently 

decode every miraculous utterance? 

Treating these sacred letters with

nothing short of reverence; modern

day Egyptologists, lovingly unfastening

a bundle of hieroglyphs? 

*

At any rate... 

your voice was the muffled thunder

that cries under the mountains; 

there is a part of you I will never know.