I am sure this is not the last time I saw you, but this is the only way I can remember you. I am beginning to forget what you look like. And that is odd, because I saw you every day.
The numerals at the right corner of the photograph say 12/1994. You had to crochet the last flower- a red one. Your back is hunched over, your beige blouse hanging lose around the shriveled breasts. Your eyebrows are blended together, an intense excitement throbbing in them. The wrinkled fingers are bent at an awkward angle, but even in the stillness of the photograph, there is alacrity in them. You are sitting at the same spot where you would sit everyday- the spot where the sunlight reflecting off the louvered doors makes a row of mellow stripes.
The light bounces off your silvery white hair, making the wisps look like floating cotton balls. The winter sun accentuates your protruding collar bones. The shallow cups glisten at the base of your neck-gathering the streams of age and stretch marks. The white sari rounds against your bony hips. The wrinkles that appear in the starched cotton sari from hours of sitting down catch a messy glow of the sun.
The room behind you is dark. But sometimes I remember the flower covered wall more distinctly than your face. You left a big empty patch for the red flowers.
The day this photograph was taken, you chose to be silent- as though any sort of company would take time away from stitching it and there would be no time to finish it after that day. I hovered around you, tapping your knees with my hands, dancing a devilish dance in front of you so as to block the light. So you wouldn't stitch anymore and would instead turn your head towards me and talk to me.
You looked up. And the camera shutter made the whirring noise. The sternness is evident in your eyes, the half smile frozen at the corner of your thin lips. You pulled out a scrawny leg from underneath your sari. The feet looked as if any flesh on them had been cut off. The skin drooped so low as though it wanted to disappear in the soil. The nails were turning green at the corners. Suddenly I wanted to throw up. I had never seen you like this. You pushed the sewing kit with your leg and motioned with your head, ordering me to sit down. I looked down. The cold marble floor of the porch was covered with dusty scratches.
