i call out to the dead

I see the dead
sometimes...
many times
in my dreams they come
and at times linger on

even in my dreams
i know they are long dead
but they don't scare me
not more than a mice would

I saw my granmother once
my aunt propping pillows
so that she could sit up
she was back
and the mattress, rolled over since she died, was being spread again
gangajali dusted the room
lit some incense too
and my grandmother looked around
i caught her eye
and we looked at each other for a long time
i wanted to ask her
how was the land of the dead?
why do you return?
And will you go back again?

Sometimes the dead call out to me
and I listen
the calling faint and muffled
and I wake up
and find nobody

They are the ghosts of my past
dead long ago when I was just a child
now they revisit me
and we talk

I am always in the old rooms where they once lived
where my grandmother chewed her betel nuts
and my grandfather read his law books
They don't come to where I live
perhaps they would feel misplaced too like me
if they did
so i travel to them

And I long for those conversations
but they haven't come in a long time
and I wonder why
And I call out to them
come visit me
come to me from whereever you are
and let's talk about home and the past
I am a dweller of the past
like them I do not belong anywhere
like them i am restless too
they are the living dead
and i am a walking ghost