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.
