A Sketch from a Ghost Town — Poems by Laila Brahmbhatt

A Sketch from a Ghost Town

Soldiers’ hands knead bread,

milk cows in the fresh meadow

beside their barracks.

Across the border, a child

soaks in sunlight,

humming lullabies

for his deaf father,

while he hears nothing.

Between Two Journeys, Unfinished

I stumbled across a vast continent,

a tiny pebble tossed by time.

I landed weightless, and amid a chorus of accents,

my Indian accent collapsed.

My enunciation of foreign names

stretched longer than the sleeves of my night-suit.

A version of me stayed zipped inside my jet-lagged suitcase,

still humming jarring Bollywood songs in the shower.

Another version wanted to mimic Britney Spears,

hoping to impress my American classmates.

On the stove, I cooked lentils using my grandmother’s recipe.

The kitchen was filled with the warm, full-bodied aroma of curry leaves,

so different from the convenience of microwave meals

I mostly relied on.

It wasn’t my first time leaving home,

but this time, I wasn’t wrapped in comfort

not even in the ponytail my mother made,

slick with homemade coconut oil.

Now I rubbed cheap, store-bought olive oil into my new haircut,

slathering my bangs,

and walked out in full daylight.

I shrank in size too,

like my clothes shrinking in American laundromats

on the wrong heat setting.

At Halloween, orange pumpkins grinned at my sari,

my foreign costume

the most-photographed look of the night.

Still, I pushed forward-becoming and unbecoming.

Sometimes galloping, sometimes pausing.

I learned the lyrics of new songs,

the names of four seasons, new fish, vegetables, cereals,

fast-cooking techniques,

how to buy discounted electronic goods at Thanksgiving.

I bent to collect wild iris from an American supermarket,

gaping at their long stems

and the longer pronunciations

of many flowers in the floral aisle.

The scent of marigolds, champa, hibiscus

flowers blooming back home

still lingered in the perfume aisle.

Above me, the sky shifted between my two homes:

a small town like Ranchi, a metropolis like New York.

The same moon rose over each, full and familiar.

A bridge stretched across the wind,

carrying my monologues and heartaches

to every corner of both my worlds.

Traitors with Forgotten Ears

Wine spilled from a glass at the family table.

The shattered glass trembled as voices

rose

an orchestra on its day off.

No one said a prayer that night,

each pretending to hear

the truth straight from God.

Before the meal started,

salt dissolved on the tongue.

Rice swallowed with the pickle

of past feuds.

Their words, like stale spices,

stuck to the throat

like leftover curry

at the bottom of an heirloom pot.

Another night ended

in half-finished confessions,

each version

a long list of forbidden goods.

Like bandits crossing borders,

each walked out of the dining hall

carrying statues

small gods fallen

from the ancestral temple.

Therapist with a Suitcase

Half an hour ago,

my thoughts left the room

like a postman after work,

walking away from his uniform.

It was an afternoon

half spent awake,

half in daydreams.

I could see my

mother’s glass bangles,

her bright orange lipsticks,

and still hear her voice through the phone

instructions to stay disciplined,

as eyelashes inside eyeglasses

always close, never touching.

I invited a therapist to come over,

who brought a suitcase locked with rubber bands,

filled with

miniature clay teacups,

siblings’ embraces and fights,

dresses for dolls,

butterfly clips,

a beloved umbrella buried in mud,

and pages filled with untold stories.

Hushed silence hiding forced smiles

sank further into cracked teeth

there was no room

for honest dialogue afterwards.

I carried the rest of my day

lying in bed with

stains of struggling emotions,

the scent of fallen jasmine in the garden,

tea spilled on old sheets,

a murmur to myself.

Packing new origami paper planes

into the suitcase,

jumping into childhood puddles,

I stepped into a new city,

liberating myself from the burden of soaked wings,

to receive incoming letters

in a fresh mailbox

that my therapist can decipher.

Image

The older they get,

the more my poems begin to shed their clothes—

not Khajuraho, not Konark,

but the unfinished idols

of Kumartuli’s goddesses.

White words, black words—

a girl’s swollen, white moon,

a fish-colored red,

leaf-like syllables

playing in water,

in wind,

in sky.

Among green pine needles on the hill,

the peepal’s raised arms,

the mango tree’s sinuous body—

white words, black words—

they flicker past.

In the russet and golden evening sky,

the clouds’ trembling waves

wheel, turn, sway—

birds riding the wind,

drawing soft white margins

in my poems.

When leaves drift on the wind’s tide,

when image-shadows fall

across blades of grass—

white, black, or red—

even if it’s not Konark or Khajuraho,

I search for them still:

those half-formed goddesses

from Kumartuli,

unfinished,

but calling.

Hiding Beneath Envelopes

One day I woke

beneath the weight of my head,

telling me:

go back to sleep.

The world needs no new face.

The pillow stares,

twinkling,

as she undresses, placing tea on a new mat.

I went back to sleep,

hiding my face beneath brown envelopes,

full of bandages,

yellow as sunflower petals.

A bandage-yes, to warm bruised fingers,

captured by buzzing mosquitoes,

shaped like Jalebi.

Hours later, I wade through the lines of shops

on a historical street.

With wounded hands,

I switch on the TV, abandoned like a grandfather’s dentures.

A large fish appears on screen,

floating in a dry sea,

its wings spanning the width of a bee.

When I was a teenager, a stranger said,

“You are beautiful.” It stung.

I shudder,

running back to my room,

through windows opened by a pregnant wind.

“How was your day?” I ask,

the scent of jasmine

wafting through the neighborhood.

She ignored me,

like my mother did on a rainy day,

as her money slipped through her purse.

Porcelain Drops

Grandfather’s grandfather

swaying like a coconut in the rooftop garden.

Then, my aunt, in another booth,

cradling moths' memoirs from an extinguished lamp.

A courtyard of ancestors,

condensed into porcelain drops-

merging, becoming twilight

in the archive of my childhood.

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About the Poet:

Laila Brahmbhatt is a poet with roots in Kashmir, raised in Bengal and Bihar, now based in New York where she works as a Senior Consultant. Her haiku, haibun, and poems have appeared in a few newspapers and journals, including Asahi Haikuist Network, Under the Basho, and Kashmir Pen.