The House of the Dead

The House of the Dead

By Roshni Swapna

Be silent.

Even a single shrapnel of a sound

can cause an explosion.

I stand in the courtyard of

the house of the one

who killed himself.

On the trampled foot steps

of the people who came and left,

silence is pooled like mucky water.

It hardly takes a second for

the ballooned up silences to burst.

Someone points out.

There is his father’s grave.

This is the abandoned well

where his insane sister 

flung herself to death.

Here is the lemon tree

where his mother plucks

the leaves of insanity.

The grandma, fed on 

the moonlight of lunacy

is yet to return.

Look, is one of these bamboos him?

Is it his movement that

shivers in the wind.

Do these red blooms

signify his resistance?

On the shadows 

that the sun’s glare spreads on us,

there is the burning scent of his flesh.

I feel like retracing my steps.

But, i cannot abandon my legs

hooked and dragged by the toes

under ground.

I cannot abandon the forest scents of

wanderings with him for years.

I cannot abandon the memory

of the houses of lacquer

where he was locked up and burnt

to save me.

I cannot return from the 

battle grounds of victorious strategies

adapted for him.

The scent of burning flesh

now emanates from within me.

I am the one who brewed

the poison that he drank.

I am the one who built

the coffin for him.

But, 

I am not the one

who wrote this poem.

The title of this poem is not

The House of the Dead.

The men with fair skin can 

name this poem `Black’

and read it thus.

I stand in the courtyard

of my own house.

I stand in the courtyard

of my own house.

If you have any objection, please be frank. And, be in touch.