Copies of Loss

cc: Ravi, Priya, fighters both, taken before their time.

• by Qadri Ismail 
• - on 12/13/2015 

Three pictures hang in my study. (Not my study actually, contractually; the bank retains the mortgage. I do not write in, from a room of my own. Besides: designed, constructed, lived in by others, their trace lingers upon this space.)

The first picture: a photograph of the young, handsome, meticulously coifed Richard Manic – Manic, not manic – de Zoysa, of his face – an image that still bruises, incites me – off the web, the Daily News if memory serves, framed together with (a typewritten copy of) a poem,  For Richard, (signed) by Arjuna Parakrama, dated February 1990, which I received through the (snail) mail.

Copies of Loss by Thavam Ratna