A Tombstone Near My Home

Sumayya Arshed

There is a tombstone

no more than three houses down my road.

Resting beneath a neem tree that drops its leaves

onto wedding cars and ambulance roofs alike.

It has lived longer than I have,

its name worn soft with rain and repetition.

The marble hums with memory

when the wind touches it right.

Some days, I pass it on my way to buy fruit,

pomegranates split open at the corner stall,

their jewelled seeds glistening like something precious pulled

from a wound, and wonder

how many wedding songs it has overheard,

the beat of drums rising through the veil

between the living and the almost-remembered.

On certain evenings,

a bride walks past it, her veil rustling against her wrists,

henna not yet faded, as if joy were something

new and fragile in her palms.

Children, powdered in talcum and joy,

run past it with palms full of sweets,

their footsteps ringing against the withering stone.

That grave,

it has listened to wedding songs,

to whispered goodbyes,

to diseases that crept in like guests

and refused to leave.

It has heard arguments muffled by dusk,

and lullabies sung as though they were last rites.

At night, the fluorescent streetlight falls

equally on the grave

and on the silver gate of my neighbour’s home,

where Life keeps cooking dinner,

keeps ironing uniforms,

keeps folding dreams into the laundry basket.

This is how the living learn to live near the dead:

by offering both a share of the light.

Time, meanwhile, perches like a crow on the wire,

its head tilted, unmoved by the scent of rosewater

drifting from a wedding feast into the dust

where someone’s name is carved in stone.

I have grown up with that tomb

like one grows beside a quiet sibling.

Aware, but never frightened.

There is a strange mercy in knowing

that joy and mourning walk the same street,

wearing different shoes but casting the same shadows.

And someday when my name is the one

worn-out by monsoon and memory,

I hope the pomegranates still burst red,

the voices still rise in song,

and someone passing by will pause and think,

how near the flame the shadow sits,

and how strange that they do not burn each other.

SUMAYYA ARSHED is a writer based in Pakistan. Her poems appear in the anthologies As the Light Fades and Things the Moon Knew, with additional work forthcoming in different literary magazines. Currently in her final year of an English Literature degree, she writes about love, memory, grief, and the quiet intersections of everyday life.