Ash Sangoram is a practicing neonatologist, neuroscientist, coach, author, poet and artist. His experiences with death and dying in the NICU greatly informs his art. These experiences were alchemized into a profound exploration (maranasati - or death contemplation) as his own parents died four days apart in 2021. He was in fellowship with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care from 2023-2024 continuing the exploration of love and loss, living and dying using the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path as a framework for healing. His “cryptoglyphs” are divined from a Source undetermined yet just as the Vedas flow their truths, his images and verses emerge from an equivalent channel. “Absence Makes” represents a potent pairing of divined image and inspired verse that point to the truths in one another and deliberately leaves space for the beholder to bring their own experience to make meaning. His hope is that if a word or a view shifts something in the reader’s own experience towa