“Cemeteries stutter like broken radios
static and memory,
all at once.
Not quiet.
Never quiet.
Just my father’s voice trapped between stations,
trying to reach me across years
he never learned how to carry.
The way he would clear his throat
before telling me things I wasn’t ready to hear.
My mother didn’t cry at burials.
She folded her grief
into the corners of her saree,
tucked them between recipe books,
let the scent of cardamom
mourn in her place.
Grief is not an echo.
It’s the bruise on a peach.
It’s turmeric beneath the nails.
It’s calling out names in a cemetery
and flinching when no one turns.
Some days I mistake sidewalks for gravestones.
Some days I pour tea for the silence at the table.
Some days I mistake dust
for the breath of memory.
Some days I say “I miss you”
to the crack in the wall near the kitchen sink,
to the kind of quiet that doesn’t leave.
But grief never finishes its tea
it just stains the cup and walks away barefoot.”