how daughters are unmade

cold, so cold—

his lips dry

cracked silence.

eyebrows fading

like an unfinished sentence.

his skin, smooth,

a sheen of wax and surrender.

salt-and-pepper stubble

beneath my kiss,

tickling against my upper lip

like a clock stalling.

my hand moved

without me.

tracing the ridge of his cheekbone,

pausing where sorrow pooled—

as if I could undo it—

as if I could press memory

back into muscle, back into being.

He was always the burning kind.

fast to anger, faster to go.

but I saw him twitch—

a gesture perhaps,

or the last revolt

a vessel refusing what it means

to be nothing..

The priest chanted,

words that folded in on themselves,

so ancient they felt like dust

settling in my lungs.

I didn’t understand,

only that I wasn’t meant

to be standing so close to the flame.

the ghee hissed—

so did they,

when I lit the pyre

in my blouse and bangles,

a bindi splitting the wrong body open.

Agni devta, accept the offering,

he said.

but what offering burns louder than regret?

my grandfather forgot.

then remembered, then forgot again.

each time the word “son”

hung like a half-chewed betel leaf—

red, ruined.

his mouth opened

like a rusted hinge,

“it should’ve been me,”

he whispered

into the corner of the room,

not to me—

to someone already gone.

how cruel

that amnesia offers relief

in intervals

a god who forgets

only until

you kneel again.

The women wailed

a guttural rhythm, 

brass lotas shaking, 

bangles cracking, 

fists that beat the earth, 

the chest, 

reaching for a grief that didn’t belong 

to anyone anymore. 

My mother clutched me

as if I was a smaller version of him, 

but I was slipping ash

in a sieve.

the debts sit now

in envelopes I cannot open.

the men speak in the third person.

she did the rites,

she took the bone,

she crossed the line.

I nod.

hold the pot.

circle the fire.

smoke stings

like unspoken apologies

this is how gods are made

and daughters unmade.