by Samyuktha Iyer, II B.A. English
last night sleep
buried itself in my backyard
so i slunk down the corridor
like a thief and stood
outside my grandmother’s door
where her soft moaning
was building a ghost town
in her hollow chest,
where the phantoms of
her broken marriage
once drowned in the
well of her ancestral home
were returning to haunt us;
her footsteps built a
kingdom at war with itself
becoming ruins wrapped
in rust and
temples with yawning hinges
watching their gods leave
in despair;
she counted her disappointments
on her prayer-bead knuckles
when my grandfather’s expectations
rained down on her like
rockets
flooding her bones and
burying her in our backyard
with a heart that was too
broken to beat
now she lay there with my
sleep;
inside the room i heard my
grandfather cough.
i slipped back into bed.
sometimes when boredom strikes
i almost fancy she’s
telling me
to kill him.