In a December poem, ghosts hung by my window
in Trinidad & Tobago, whispering in a low hush
of Creole, my father’s siblings, long-dead spiteful
children. Earlier in the evening, they iron my neatly
folded sorrows, hot coal glowing in their eyes,
they command that I write down the names
of my progenies on the leaves of olive trees.
A missing link lingers by the gothic door
of the house of volcano that opens a green eye,
reads fate lines on my palm-
I could become mist or rain, I choose to be rain
in the swamps of liquid Caribbean moon.
Potholed streets gather the ammoniac smell
of dreams opening into silence, a cluster of poems stir,
waking from a trance.
Smitha Sehgal 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 Ink Sweat & Tears, Panoply, Marrow Magazine, Marathon Literary Review and elsewhere.