The Medley

is a twice-a-year literary journal run by the students of Hansraj College, University of Delhi. It is a repository of stories, poems and essays sent to us from around the world since 2018.

The Headstone

The day your parent died, you were not there. You were dreaming. Your dead parents' locked house is crumbling, and you can feel the cemetery growing in you. Grey, cold block one over the other, growing taller. You think one day it might surface out of you. You feel the weight and try to think of a word for 'getting used to carrying the weight.' The blossoms in their wild garden fail to provide solace, but the wild mulberries can still feed you. When you reach the house of your childhood, there is no familiar sound. You cannot hear anything, no matter how hard you try. You do feel the familiar air. You listen to birds tweeting and watch some plants that survived with the least attention in the front yard; you walk past creepers tangling your feet. You try to unlock the door. Your hands try harder. It feels as if the 'lock is locked. The rust reminds you of how feeble locks are; you persist, and it clicks. You push open the door. There are dust, cobwebs, silence, stillness, and now sunlight. There is a cool draft of wind, and it smells fusty. The walls seem to have been redesigned. Molds with random patterns; when you touch them, the paint peels like wafers. Your parents chose the same color over and over every year. The paint seems to have dissolved. Mix one part bleach with three parts water in a bucket; using a scrub brush or heavy-duty sponge, vigorously scrub the mold-affected area in the wall with the bleach/water solution until the mold spots have disappeared. You won't do that, would you? You are too tired. You don't want to touch anything. You see their bed, the same bed cover; you sink in, and your head rests on the pillow. It's soggy; you feel you are hugging the bodies of your dead parent once more, the skin, moles, and hair; as their after-bath looks fresh and clear, you see the life in the color of their eyes in the sunlight. You fall asleep and dream of turning into a colossal grey block, a child running around it with pebbles in the fists, singing like birds. A ringtone beside you wakes you up; it's your son from a faraway land; you say something like, 'It's fine. You quickly turn to your steady voice; you have learned to shift fast from one mode to another and are aware that your voice has an impact. But what you don't know is that it reveals a lot. A moment later, your son finds you a decade older. It is still noon. You walk around the kitchen and then go upstairs. The wood seems to be parting as if inviting you in. There are three nests in the tree; two seem abandoned. It belongs to a robin. The dust is just fine. You leave the cobwebs; it is their home. You don't have any plan to remove the rest of the lives from inside, right? You don't need anything from here now. You leave your marks everywhere in the house while trying not to engage with the objects around you. In the evening, you walk out to see your neighbor, who has survived the years. He is walking with his grandson with the same nose. You feel the older man is looking at you for a moment, but he fails to recognize you. You choose to eat out (for you don't want to eat inside alone) at a joint you have never been to and never existed. When you put the bill in your pocket, you feel the weight of the keys. You walk back in the dark. It is fresh and quiet in the open; the air carries the silence of a sleeping river. You try to think the roads are better now. The following day people are coming to help you empty the place, and soon you won't carry the weight. Will you?

Omi Anish

Omi Anish is a writer based in Ahmedabad. She is a freelance ESL trainer and a staff reader at The Maine Review. A lover of all things surreal and abstract, Omi is drawn to brevity while writing and intricate patterns while crocheting. Omi has previously published in literary journals such as The Inklette, RIc Journal, and The Medley. She has an upcoming publication in Moonlighting by Lit Pub.