Marionettes
By Indu Parvathi
This morning, the third day,
my aunt comes back to us.
Ghee-lit wicks sputter in ire
by her interred remains from the pyre.
I had witnessed, after the body burnt,
how the chemical wilderness that held her
crackled to silence.
But, when the priest casts
his shadow, ant-sized gnomes scamper
down the urn
to plunge
into the bowl of holy water.
Now, after the third death, she will be water-borne
to where trees do not grow.
When I was young, not yet inhabited,
my mother made dolls for me.
They perched on the window sills
at the threshold
where the tunnels start.
Arecanut women with broom-brush hair,
egg-shell girls wobbling on wax bellies,
all in sequined blouses and pleated skirts.
But I loved the glass-bottle dolls the most,
crystal eyes blazing from their cotton-heads
felt lips stretched to smiles
their insides,
only air.Indu Parvathi (she/her) is a teacher from Bengaluru, India. Her poetry appears in or slated to appear in various literary magazines and platforms including publications in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry (2021, 2022, and 2023), Nightingale & Sparrow, Eunoia Review, The Seventh Wave Magazine, Eclectica, Kitaab Quarterly, and Sweet: Lit.
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Wow, wow, wow. So gorgeous! Thank you.