Unspoken Inheritance
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘Windows cradle the world’s weight— / concerns, french braided, / but strands, a newly freed tribe. / Steering wheel clutched, / as if holding an inner child’
Grandpa,
held knowledge by the neck;
letters avenged,
students fluent in fumbles.
One rebel born, died unnamed.
In his absence, a presence lingers,
family unfolding chits—
“Newspaper shouldn’t be two inches away,”
“A pinch of extra salt is forbidden.”
One mistake; shivers embrace fear,
skin embracing lost immigrants.
Meals, cooked with love,
beaten to taste like funerals;
his favorite cuisine—
death of affection.
Sundays, he punishes rebels,
laying them naked on the floor,
his son at the center,
blowing clouds with faint breaths.
Sister licked leftovers,
retold by candlelight,
until shadows devoured nights,
and every candle after
burns with the scent
of her dreams.
Dreams rename end as birth;
hope clings to torn skin, healing slowly.
Grandma, snatches affirmations
from a child’s diary—
small words, large for her mouth,
molded into a mid-twenties adult:
confused, scared, hopeless.
Her anklets sing through the house
screams resting on eyelids, unheard.
She cracks hard-shelled coconuts,
scooping out words;
a drop in her tongue:
“Kindness,” she pronounces,
“Naive,” they correct.
Mispronunciations dragged to the moon,
their meeting place, repaired,
open skies damage women,
Grandpa says.
Her mother’s words echo:
“Share everything with your husband.”
Teetering on the pot’s edge,
one push—
meaning melts into hot oil.
She smears it through his hair,
but it spills; first over her wishes,
then from a bowl, now broken
shards in her legs,
mistaking her for broken porcelain.
Hairpins fail to hold delusion,
another day (was) sacrificed;
her.
Her son grows up on station platforms,
tearing at his hair—
each train’s gaze
a promise of hidden wisdom.
Unsure, he boards and unboards
his gains: confusion, contradiction.
Old voice’s grip wrinkled to one, the new—
“Newspaper man should not be late.”
“The guest should sit on that chair.”
One mistake, and timelines shift.
Law twists into a labyrinth,
whips condemned,
words blending into walls.
One August glance;
tears stretch heart’s edges,
and he longed to learn
how the sky holds the moon.
The girl dreams in shades of blasphemy—
Azaadi, Swadhinata, Svātantryam, Svatantrata;
some seep into his iron doctrines,
fists splinter cocoons, voices burst forth,
drying the hierarchy,
turning toward vast horizons—
open windows.
Windows cradle the world’s weight—
concerns, french braided,
but strands, a newly freed tribe.
Steering wheel clutched,
as if holding an inner child;
strength demanded, apologies offered.
Footsteps outpace breaths;
one cry, from the balcony’s edge:
all maps forgotten.
One assuring eye contact,
the braided woman runs.
A shared hug,
and steering clutched,
this time to leave.
Cheers and hope
fly out of drying eyes;
call abandoned toast, burnt,
paper torn, sorry unattached.
A question mark returns later,
to her favorite food;
salt and spices misplaced,
tasting close enough to a fullstop.
Eyelids pried open on sundays,
murdered dreams seeking lost memory;
fooled by a thin veil of contentment
they slide right in—
Baba traded art for kitchen smoke,
the air she breathed,
stirring mistakes,
each spice a retired fighter,
failure recalling lost tastes.
Bricks realign, cell turned to sanctuary;
revolution, she learns, tastes
like slow-burning hope.
Hope,
lens of her child’s eyes.
Rage, its first word
uttered between—
pondering the severed head
a crescent moon once held;
flickering half-stretched smile of birth giver,
reflection on water unchanged.
Fluent in four languages,
another in practice,
‘what if,’ undefeated.
Fights as vocabulary lessons,
daily, ten times,
dried rose turned bookmark,
kissing pages, you’re far,
oceanic eyes dived into,
life risk, a hobby—
love left unembraced is pain.
On sundays,
hearts peeled like tangerines,
mistaken as your deception;
fingertips lose softness—
‘Rotten’ she smiles, as if an old friend.
Watermelon skull cracked open,
sealed with threats, layered with prayers;
hands, red, used as ink—
each word a scream slit in two,
hoping the paper holds
what the heart regrets.
Rotten exiled, paper holds the crown,
criteria of authority— heavy;
for eyes it failed to swim in.
In excess,
coursing through generations,
lightened by others’ plates,
each bite a thread of judgment,
superiority igniting wars.
Wrinkles on skin, cracks on plates,
a race unfolds—
only the scents untouched
by time.
Mistakenly used,
identity returns like a scorned lover.
One generation
cut words from dictionaries
to craft new cuisines;
tongue starved;
the second
smeared plate remnants as kohl,
fullness unchallenged;
the third embraced—
posing in old frames,
surfacing from skin
in pauses and whispers,
rest, lying under the tongue,
awaiting their moment—
an untranslatable bitterness
too harsh to swallow,
too bitter to spit.
Our mother tongue is Bengali,
but the language we speak in is grief.
***
Mrittika Chatterjee is a select writer for Surprisingly Short Stories, The Chaotic Cosmic Muse, and Split Poetry India. Her poetry has been featured in Poems India, The Blacksheep, the Cosmic Quill Contest, Verse of Silence's Poetry in Pamphlet Contest, and more. You can find her on Instagram: @mrittikaaaa.
