Unsaid Whispers

Wind flows through the upper branches laden with guava. What seems to be a variegated figment of mistfestooning them is a creature prancing—probably a human made up of only bones and skin, no flesh—as bit by bit,it comes into view in the twilight hour of dusk.

- by Sreelekha Chatterjee

Trying some air guitar, it's a mix of crimson, yellow, and pale blue. As if playing a game of peekaboo through the gaps in the branches, it appears and instantly departs behind the main trunk, about 10-12 feet above the ground. I am used to this by now. The guava tree adjoining our house, casting several pockets of shadows on my mind and the walls, is hosting an entity, hard to explain through the rationale of sanity.

Sitting in my first-floor bedroom and knitting woolen socks in the humid heat of June, I have nothing much to do about it, let alone sharing it with someone in the house. Not that I haven't tried earlier. An unresponsive husband away for work to a distant city, an indifferent mother-in-law, and a father-in-law who will always agree with his wife and can never think beyond what she desires.

Every time I speak aloud, it delivers nothing in the shared walls of singular people, family by circumstance. My own parents have stopped visiting me, fearing it would trigger my mother-in-law's displeasure. Neighbors are not allowed to see me. If the children in the neighborhood ever come near me, my mother-in-law shoos them away. My life at my in-laws’ place has turned into a chronic, dusky greyness from where nightfall seems imminent, but dawn appears to be a distant echo.Something tells me that the creature is one of my own, and it will not do any harm.

Beautiful but unadorned, my deep and ruffled heart, of which I am no longer the commander, is bare and waiting. My world is always falling; perhaps there is fault in my stars. I am a flower that refuses to bloom, fading even before it’s open. Is it a matter of choice or destiny?