Ghosts And Ghungroo

By Ayushi Chandra

We burrowed ourselves into the soft hollow of an old banyan tree, our home a distant yellow I saw her crouched beside me, with eyes like a cat quick and lonely. She was the ghost, I found in my attic, a ghost of a person whose face was soft like a flower, her hands, delicate like the gossamer wing of a dragonfly I killed last summer, I kill, she is dead, I survive, she wishes to live. I ask her what life is after death, she smirks ‘Regret’ she replies, ‘I wanted to be a dancer’. I imagined her, twirling around like a white swan ready to fly, but she had chains around her legs, the cuckoos sang above us, their voice deepening in my brown skin, miring like an eagle into a prey A sound of a Ghungroo came drifting in the air Like faint sheets of lightning, igniting a luminous

desire- She said, those were her tears I never knew tears had a sound, but it was- painful, her memories like light, after the rain, washed away by the earth, now grew like a tree, sheltering me. After I walked back home, I lost her. My ma was cooking, her hands tied to the hearth forever the heat, the swelling of blisters, the smell of sweat she had eyes so big, with an ocean roaring inside an ache, mythic, yet deeply patient. I have seen a thousand times, a thousand dreams buried in her, burning silently, like a ghost. The sound of the Ghungroo echoes, I hear it she was too afraid, too scared, too sacrificing, in my dream I see her burrowed in the soft hollow of the banyan tree, sleeping like a child nourishing years and years of patience. By Ayushi Chandra