By Vaishnavi Bhavthankar
Memory is not a quiet guest,
It enters like a knife in silk
With bloodless grace, it takes its seat,
And drinks the past like spoiled milk.
It wraps your ribs in phantom thread,
Then whispers all you tried to kill
A scent, a room, a name, a laugh,
Returning soft, but sharp and shrill.
Not all wounds come with broken skin,
Some scream beneath the silent will
What doesn't bleed, festers in verse,
And what we name, we learn to still.
A child recalls the father's belt,
The mother’s silence, taut and still
How love was rationed out in grams,
And guilt was served in every meal.
Memory is a loyal ghost
It haunts you not to break, but build.
It holds your hand with fire-veined grace,
Then drags you back to what you willed.
Yet sometimes, pain can form a psalm,
A fever dream the heart distills.
The bruise becomes a bannered hymn,
The ash, remade in iron will.
Write it down before it rots.
Let grief grow wings, not windowsills.
For memory is the mother root
It poisons you, and then it heals.
My grandmother stitched her memory
into quilts and temple bells, not verse.
I write because no one burned my tongue
but the silence I inherit feels worse.