Beneath the Shadow – Smitha Sehgal
The house is a bramble without you. Did you know?
Each corner holds out elongated shadows
I stumble upon even as daylight pours under
the cinnamon tree. On the curtain of silence, eight-
legged words crawl, and their eyes burn with submerged impudence.
I admit that I am not faultless. That all those pandemic years
I spent redrafting force majeure classes I dodged your questions
with the practiced ease of handling a bewildered child.
You would not believe that the world had come beneath
a shroud and there were no flamingos from my island
to yours. That the only thing we could count on
was each other’s voices. Birdcall. The receiver
on your right ear. Deep within I knew enough
not to play with you, but I was not prepared
for the bewildered child you would become.
The night I arrived you looked away with a smile,
and every night thereon I have been constantly
trying to knot the ends of past and future
without the isthmus of the present. This house
of sour mangoes and pickled peppers where I wanted
to grow old once, it is a bramble without you
and I swallow each hour like a forced prescription.
The wooden planks have cracked from their core.
Smitha Sehgal (she/ her) is a legal professional and poet who writes in two languages—English and Malayalam. Her poems have been featured in contemporary literary publications such as Usawa Literary Review, Panoply, Shot Glass Journal, Marrow Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, Gone Lawn Journal and elsewhere.
