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Photo by bharath g s on Unsplash

Poetry | November/December 2021

Light and Shadow Games

By Babitha Marina Justin

History: In Kerala, India, two girls, aged thirteen and nine, were found hanging inside their one-room home 52 days apart. Post-mortem examinations confirmed that the minors were subjected to sexual assault before their deaths. The judgment in the case acquitted the accused and kicked up a storm of protests in the state, with civil society organizations and opposition parties decrying the police investigation and political interference in the case.

A pinafore in the air—
combed cotton skipping, 
hemmed into a hopscotch
with the wind.
On protest poles
they pinch and clip
your delicate shoulders, 
hang you there: you flutter 
like a lost flag.
Not too young to watch lichen
worm into the corners of your walls.
Not too old to feel the bump of your 
body-maps break, smothered 
with bear-hugs.
Crouching, you called out 
to achan—father—in the confused day- 
light, he looked back—
the glint in his eye—a steel-stab. 
Weightless you fly now,
gravity doesn't grapple with you,
his dark, grimy grip.
You are a memory,
on a brittle bamboo-beam,
a scorching sunray squinting into
the roof that once cradled you with care,
looping strands of coir into 
well-knotted noose.
I watch you playing
with wind and light,
clipped on the clumsy
cobwebs of our wafer-thin 
memory lines. 


1 reply on “Light and Shadow Games”

Kathy Theresa Ponsays:
November 24, 2021 at 10:38 pm

Heartbreaking…

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