LEAVING
Anitha Murthy

A modest dwelling.

A period at the end of
a lane of more
self-conscious houses

An abode that reeks
of childhood dreams
with dustbunnies
hiding Easter egg
memories in every corner

The feast is over,
we tell the silverfish
and we raise a storm
of cleaning,
scouring old scars
that won't go away
with the trickle
of tears

What to take?
What to discard?
All answers are wrong,
uneasy.

We discover words, frail but
still ready to embrace us
We discover pictures, black
and white, pixellated
freezers thawing us out
We discover buttons and nails,
needles and blank sheets
awaiting closure

When the truck speeds away
taking a hundred thousand million
of our breaths with it,
I turn and see
Father bending
trying to pick up
a strand of thread
from the dust
with shaky fingers

—First appeared in Shakespeare & Company on Ryze

CP

Anitha Murthy lives in Bangalore, India. Her writing has recently been published in EveryDay Fiction and MicroHorror. She won the SMS Poetry prize at the Kala Ghoda 2009 festival, held in Mumbai, India. Her home on the web is here.