The Haunting of The Bazaar
By Meghna Yennu
You used to tell me that the if you dug deep enough anywhere, you could always find
roots if you searched hard enough. Look!, you whispered
in that way you used to get when you were all excited, this is how the trees
steal life. Hands deep in the dirt, the fingers traced over the bark, like one would
old scars. Thinking of the trees, their hunger buried in the ground, if only I could see.
Look!, the trees whisper all the way around, Look!
But the ground is fallow, and there are no longer things to trip over as I run
but I still stumble anyway. Liar, I think, as my knees break the soil, hitting
nothing at all. Liar, I think, as I break into a run because I’m always
running. When the sweat drips down my cheek, my
mind does not drift to thoughts of bitter rain
gently dripping on the barren soil, the land
always cruel, always hungry, and
I am never full. My eyes are on the ground,
Are you a child? Look up!, but the sun rises
and the night falls and the earth grows untamed
with unknown violence, yet my gaze remains affixed
to the land. Past the point of no return, I don’t
look back. I don’t look back, even when the forest fades into
an impossible image of vendors and stands
from memories beckon from beyond as brambles and branches
shift into banners threaded throughout the bazaar, littered through the
field of festivities. The buzz of crickets blends into
a familiar song of laughter and chatter that gives way to
lights that appear one-by-one till the whole night
is filled with a thousand little suns,
each one brighter than the last. And I don’t look back
even when you carelessly grab my shoulder, Akka¹
and shove piping hot ariselu² in my hands. My favorite,
even when it stings my fingers. The sweetness of the scalding sugar syrup
spills from my palms to the earth, where ants await, hungry to lap it up
and still you pester me to come to buy more and more
till I can taste nothing but saccharine on my tongue. And I don’t look back
even when you beg me to come with you.
Let’s wander the stalls, you say, just me and you, as if
that’s all you really want, and maybe it is
all you really want, but I’ll never know. And
even when I tell you,
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t
a prayer on repeat.
You don’t listen anyways.
You never do.
Just tugging my wrist
as if by just holding on,
I’ll change my mind.
As if you can make me
want with your will
alone. And I don’t look back
because I don’t have to. You’ve come to me
in mirrors on display, hanging from the walls.
Looming over me, I see our reflections
warped, cracked, and distorted.
There you are, you say, in that knowing voice of yours.
I knew you’d come back, You’ll always come back, in the end.
There you are, I think. Your plastered grin and perfect teeth,
I tilt my head and I see it,
what everyone wants me to be
but looking from another angle,
slowly I come into view again.
Too wide-eyed and naive, just like you always said. Resting my hand on the glass
smooth and fine, I let my nails dance on the edge
of my reflection and wonder about the fragility of distance
and the troubles of running from the ink that runs in your veins
and that no matter how hard I press,
I leave no scratches.
Flawless. And I look back
and
nothing.
The ground left untreaded and untouched,
save for the blight of my footprints.
The bazaar³
gone.
Like a dream,
Like you,
it has faded away.
Dully, the dirt comes to view again. Crickets
begin their melancholy song. I run my hands
through the flawless earth.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t
But even knowing this, childishly, I begin to cry. My tears trickle
down my cheek, disappear on the grass.
Unseen.
And I am always running. When I am running,
I keep on tripping over these roots in the ground, or so I tell myself,
and they don’t exist, or so I tell myself,
and I keep on thinking about I want nothing to do with you,
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
and the trees whisper, Look!
and your childhood laughter rings in my ears.
