By Yashvi Singh
Last night I dreamt of the ghost that lives in my grandfather's house since decades
Lover of silence, she made a home in the darkness
My mother woke me up - Moving around in fury
He comes in too, screaming out at the four-legged
The verbal monster is ineffective on the one who doesn't know language
However every being knows to be obedient when kicked.
I see it, I see the ghost in front of me….
The one I dreamt of last night
her possessing my house mates
She bedevilled my father many a times
And his brother, his son
A ghost so vicious
Could she have made a man of this kin, kill?
Did she try to make another a rapist ?
What will become of my brother???
I see the ways she grapples my mother
My aunts, my sisters too-
Handicapped by a possessed self-inflicted assault
I must face her before she tries to engulf me too
It's a new day
She lurks inside me
Waiting for me to accept what she says and give in -
I turn around
I ask her what she wants
And why she haunts us all-
I refuse to make you mine
And I'd rather take the fall
Her name is legacy.
For she is passed on by the mothers of this family -
Inherited by the sons and daughters
All the men who thought they carried the anger of their old man, was a legacy of their mothers;
The wrongs, the screams, the abuse, the assaults.
Emotions don't die, they travel -
For every being is made of the core of their mother
Every child is born with her pain
The daughters spend their life amassing more of their own
and the sons may be exempted by the societal evil, but never by the parental one
For he may be the big bad man outside,
But at home, he has a father too ~
He is stretched thin and beaten down,
She is compressed and drilled all around.
When He bleeds, she sweeps
He's the leachate, she's the sponge -
He lays and writhes in his smell
She drinks his essence and pretends to be well
For women live in silence, they will rot in silence.
A man lives screaming, and he dies too, screaming.
Liberating times, these are
The women scream too ~
Not matter the decade, the silent pain never dies
But exponentially it proliferates, quietly assassinates
This bloodline will die with me, I assert like I've been learning to
A sight to remember, I see a proud smile on the face of a ghost;
“since you don’t let me be,
I have no choice but to let you be.
However a human is never to be free from a curse
and so you shall bear the weight of something that’s worse.
You shall never be possessed, but you are cursed to face your demons on your own
And when he overpowers who you are at your core, you will have no place to call a home.
And you shall find peace in the dark, learn to love the silence.
And maybe try a bit harder, so you won’t end up here in my place one day.”