WHERE THE LOTUS STILL BLOOMS
by GAYATHRI NAIR C
The lotus pond still keeps our names
beneath its patient, emerald skin.
No one calls across the courtyard now,
yet the water answers every wind.
The house has learned the language of silence.
Its walls, once warmed by evening lamps,
now cradle dust instead of laughter,
and moonlight instead of family.
The veranda waits with folded shadows.
The wooden doors no longer sigh open
for hurried footsteps returning home,
or the scent of rain carried in on cotton clothes.
Moss has embroidered every forgotten stone.
The old mango tree still leans toward the roof
as though listening for a grandmother's song
that has not been sung in years.
They say the house is haunted.
Perhaps it is.
But not by monsters hiding in the dark.
It is haunted by unfinished conversations,
by birthdays that never came again,
by letters tucked into fading books,
by teacups that remember warm hands,
by prayers whispered before dawn,
by children who promised they would always return.
The lotus knows every secret.
Each dawn it opens its petals
like tiny pages from an ancient diary,
revealing reflections of faces
the world has already forgotten.
At dusk it closes them gently,
guarding every memory
from the impatience of passing years.
Sometimes the wind crosses the pond,
carrying the fragrance of wet earth,
and for one impossible heartbeat
the empty windows seem to smile.
Not because someone has come home
but because the house remembers
what home once meant.
One day the roof will surrender to the seasons,
the walls will return to the soil,
and vines will inherit every room.
Yet the lotus pond will remain,
holding the sky,
holding the rain,
holding the echoes of generations,
until someone kneels beside its quiet waters
and realizes that love never truly leaves.
It simply waits
like a lotus blooming
in a forgotten pond,
beside an abandoned house
that is haunted only
by the tenderness
of those
who once called it home.
Published on the Writory Wall.