The Ache of the Empty Chair

There is a specific kind of cold that settles in the marrow when a space is left intentionally vacant. It is not the absence of heat, but the presence of a ghost. I remember the Sunday dinners after my grandfather passed; the table was set for six, but we were only five. The silence in that empty chair had a texture—it was rough, like unwashed wool against the skin, scratching at the edges of our laughter. We tried to fill the room with the smell of roasted cumin and damp earth, but the air felt thin, stretched tight over a void that refused to be ignored. We carry these absences in our shoulders, a permanent hunch of holding onto what is no longer there. It is the body’s way of mourning, keeping the shape of a person long after they have dissolved into the ether. How do we learn to sit comfortably in a room that is perpetually missing a piece of its own heart?

Kurien Koshy Yohannan has captured this heavy silence in his image titled The Reds. It reminds me that even in the most precise formations, the eye is always drawn to the space where someone should be. Does the sky feel heavier to you when it is missing a part of itself?