They just left

The family had just left, plates on the table, the smell of food in the living room, towels on the floor, bedsheets with their bodies impressions. They stormed into the place, started looking through everything for a trace of their tale- where did they go, why did they flee so quick, some of them are examining ‘ecological, societal, macro-level factors’. I just look for him.

I fight back my pride, and search with them, through things he must have touched. Also searching for a reason. I notice some of them have started pocketing some of the things from his house, their home. I stop them vehemently, return the stuff to its place. They say- they will never probably come back, what use is it to anybody anymore. I am thinking of how distant they are from our lovely truth- they think of a crime, the thrill of the chase of solving a puzzle, marauding and looting. Such vehemence. I am looking for what happened. I search too- through things I would never touch ordinarily, stitching a story I think I started and he says he invited me into.

It is like I have blocked that little period of when it happened. Like when I design experiments- I block a factor to shut out its noise, to understand others better. What was I trying to understand if not him? I thought he was the pivot of all my excursions. I just know he is gone now. He left in a hurry-he didn’t take his watch as if the time that had passed had to be left behind. He didn’t take his brown shirt.

They are still searching, tumbling through glass and crockery and gilded articles. I turn away from their faces, my face will betray how it hurts. There is so much motion in his large house, the colors and the shine blind my thought like tears blind my sight.

We find nothing- I don’t find him, they don’t find them either.