A Ghazal for the Children
Shreya Vikram
Shreya Vikram
"Figurative Abstraction" by unidentified artist; brush and ink with pencil on paper; 23 1⁄2 x 20 1⁄8 in.; ca. 1930-1938; open source from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
A child loses her tongue first. Stuck out and hanging. The word missing
can be taken to mean lost or left. The children’s tongues have gone missing.
The tongue does not refuse, it selects. Trust me when I say there’s a difference. The children search
for the wrong words, learn to curl them in. What is unselected is drawn missing.
Do we want them back? The children. Their tiring, overgrown tongues. Trust when I say I don’t know
what I’m saying. Trust the play of my grief, which is always staged. Trust I’m missing. Trust I’ve scorned, missing.
The children remind me of a door. A wall you could push around to go
somewhere else. You could say their knobs have gone missing.
What is gone stakes its place in time. Digs into skin, settles in bone.
What is gone has been here, once, has spoken. Here, their tongues shorn, missing.
I watch videos of waves crashing with the sound off. Soundless rage.
The power in my fingers to shut them up. Voices sawn, missing.
Sometimes, a knob is the door & the door is the room. Sometimes, they arrive
with no tongues. Tongues, they can be silent or silenced, no matter. They can be found and left and mourned missing.
can be taken to mean lost or left. The children’s tongues have gone missing.
The tongue does not refuse, it selects. Trust me when I say there’s a difference. The children search
for the wrong words, learn to curl them in. What is unselected is drawn missing.
Do we want them back? The children. Their tiring, overgrown tongues. Trust when I say I don’t know
what I’m saying. Trust the play of my grief, which is always staged. Trust I’m missing. Trust I’ve scorned, missing.
The children remind me of a door. A wall you could push around to go
somewhere else. You could say their knobs have gone missing.
What is gone stakes its place in time. Digs into skin, settles in bone.
What is gone has been here, once, has spoken. Here, their tongues shorn, missing.
I watch videos of waves crashing with the sound off. Soundless rage.
The power in my fingers to shut them up. Voices sawn, missing.
Sometimes, a knob is the door & the door is the room. Sometimes, they arrive
with no tongues. Tongues, they can be silent or silenced, no matter. They can be found and left and mourned missing.
About the Author
Shreya Vikram is a writer based in India. She has been recognised by Best Small Fictions 2021 and the Adroit Prizes for Prose. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ruminate, Hobart, Mid-American Review, Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a Submissions Editor at Smokelong Quarterly. You can find more of her writing at shreyavikram.com.
About the Work
"It wouldn't be presumptuous to say that the past year has shaken most of the world. Lockdowns push the political into the personal; they force a de-compartmentalization, for better or worse. We work and eat and love and sleep under the same roofs; there is little point in holding onto the distinctions between those different strands of our lives. This fluidity has seeped into my art as well. Nonfiction and fiction no longer seem like two distinct categories. Pieces that started as visual art blur seamlessly into prose. My work leans into the gaps between genre. It refuses any label except its own focus."
Shreya Vikram is a writer based in India. She has been recognised by Best Small Fictions 2021 and the Adroit Prizes for Prose. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ruminate, Hobart, Mid-American Review, Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a Submissions Editor at Smokelong Quarterly. You can find more of her writing at shreyavikram.com.
About the Work
"It wouldn't be presumptuous to say that the past year has shaken most of the world. Lockdowns push the political into the personal; they force a de-compartmentalization, for better or worse. We work and eat and love and sleep under the same roofs; there is little point in holding onto the distinctions between those different strands of our lives. This fluidity has seeped into my art as well. Nonfiction and fiction no longer seem like two distinct categories. Pieces that started as visual art blur seamlessly into prose. My work leans into the gaps between genre. It refuses any label except its own focus."
