घुड़सवार

Loose white hairs drift across the counter,
fall into the sugar bowl. No one notices at first.
At dinner, your cousin stirs three spoons into her tea.
She drinks you, unknowing.

Later, I find hair floating on the soup—
your body clinging to us like a secret.
Someone laughs too loudly.
The knife slips while slicing bread;
blood blooms into the loaf,
and still, we pass it around the table.

You've always been here:
in the cough that interrupts grace,
the rash blooming on the child’s neck,
the way my brother chews glassy-eyed,
spoon scraping porcelain until it cracks.

We inherit you like this:
splinters, filings, the fine ash of your skin
settling over our food.
When the storm ripped the roof open,
your hair streamed down the hallway,
soaked and clinging to the walls,
and we carried it in buckets to the street,
dumping you into the gutters
where children splashed without knowing.

It is a contamination, this love,
a hunger that never lets us wash our hands clean.

I try to bake bread without you,
but grief rises in the dough,
pulls at the crust,
leaving my mouth raw.
The kitchen smells like you, after you.
I press and press but cannot keep you out.

By midnight the sugar bowl is full again.
I swallow spoonfuls just to prove I can.
You stay inside me,
unwanted and irrevocable,
sweetness laced with your dust.