In the attic of my grandmother’s house,

there lived an ancestor spirit.

In my brother’s imagination, it was

a cross between a cat and a mongoose—

absurdity is our common love.

The spirit and I wandered the house at night.

Me, looking for food and absent parents, and

it, for secrets in a joint family—

of aunts who eloped with strangers

of women who slept with their neighbors

of children born out of unhappy marriages

of last thoughts before a suicide—

secrets sheathed in years of imposed shame.

There is a spirit in each of our heads

who wanders only at night.

published in The Palm Leaf, UK, October 2020