She was an old woman,
a regular visitor
with a pot tucked beneath her arm
and another balanced on her head.
A dusky skin clung
to the few remaining bones
that aging had spared.
A white saree brushed her knees,
while her walking stick
carried a hunch
much like her weary back.
Her shrill voice
floated through the morning air
in broken circles,
a familiar interruption
to the clinking tea cups
and the routine of breakfast.
It disturbed leftover sleep,
yet somehow completed the day.
We rarely noticed
how human connection
quietly grows
between strangers.
How memory settles
into the smallest habits.
How an entire community
can become accustomed
to a single presence.
Today, there was only silence.
Then came the eerie wails
of grieving neighbors,
their grief spilling
into the empty street.
A bier moved slowly
past my gate,
and with it,
a sudden understanding
of mortality.
For loneliness
does not always arrive
when someone lives alone.
Sometimes it appears
after loss,
when an ordinary face
that belonged
to our mornings
is carried away by death,
leaving behind
the undeniable truth
of old age:
that every life,
no matter how unnoticed,
becomes part of someone else’s world.
