This house is a mausoleum for you; my grandfather.

I hear your footsteps on the floorboards,

trampling the broken glass.

Your voice bellows like a chorus of hungry dogs:

My father exhumes you this morning,

Drags your corpse into the living room

Hot nostril air breathing down my back.

Pleased to meet you ghastly revenant,

Whom the soil had swallowed before my birth,

You are unearthed on mornings like these,

When my father has swallowed enough spirits to spit you out.

 

∞

Ronaldo Mohammed is a Trinidadian poet, teacher and education administrator.