Father's a ghost. In the shadows, he'd drift.

His scowl through our windows, a draught, haunting.

Eyes never mirrored the flames that burnt his

Home, a place he'd fled, he'd lost, he's lost in.

Hidden away were old uncle's letters,

Sheets furrowed, folded, in father's drawers.

Told tales of harsh summers and shrewd winters.

Those rose-lipped words, "bhai jaan" like signed waivers.

Was that where dad kept his fondness, folded?

Refuge in solitude, his brother's words? 

Perhaps father was never taught to love.

Perhaps the only love he knew, he stole.

Perhaps alive, I would not feel that love,

Only once I too, became letters, worn.

The writer is a high school graduate