The Madwoman in the Attic
Poem: ‘Ink spills like blood, / blotting the margins of her name. / Each word a bone, / each sentence, / a noose of syntax.’
The house is a skull,
Its attic, the last aching tooth.
She writes in dust,
where no one reads.
Ink spills like blood,
blotting the margins of her name.
Each word a bone,
each sentence,
a noose of syntax.
Rain ticks on the roof like regret.
A moth eats through her diaries.
The mirror sighs.
Her hands grow transparent,
pages flutter from them
like birds dying mid-flight.
The window won’t open.
Or maybe
she won’t try.
She dreams in parentheses
(weeping)
(drowning)
(falling from punctuation marks)
Below, they dine.
They dance.
They forget she ever sang.
Her last letter reads
like a psalm to absence.
Then, a thud: A semi-
colon.
And the attic door swings
gently shut,
like an eyelid
closing over a ghost.
***
Anju Devadas R D currently works as a Guest Faculty in the Department of English at Pondicherry University. A budding poet, her work has appeared in The Madras Courier, LittCrit, Feminism In India, and other journals and magazines. Her creative and critical writing moves between the personal and the cultural, drawing on confessional and feminist traditions. You can find her on Instagram: @unbearable_lightnessof_being and X: @anju_devadas.
