Her Lingering Fragrance

by Maliha Iqbal


We can still feel them around us
When the wind blows across our faces
The centuries gone by have given them no peace
Because they still talk to us.
You burned our ancestors alive
At the funeral pyres of their husbands
Because you did not believe
That she was an entire galaxy
Shining with the magic of stars
That flowed through her soul
And that’s why before you
Pushed her into the fire
She burst out and spread her essence like a dandelion
And even as the flames surrounded her
As her screams echoed through the watching crowd
As her saree turned into a long ribbon of fire
Even as her flesh burned,
She slowly unravelled her life force into wind like an incense
And when the wind blows across our face
We can still feel them around us
The centuries gone by have given them no peace
Because they still talk to us
Telling us to burn down the restrictions
To burn down the violence
To burn down the patriarchy.


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Maliha Iqbal is a student and writer from Aligarh, India. Many of her short stories, write-ups, letters and poems have been published in magazines like Livewire (The Wire), Creativity Webzine, Cerebration, Histolit, Countercurrents, Times of India, Freedom Review, ArmChair Journal, Kitaab, Counterview, Good Morning Kashmir, Writers Cafeteria, Café Dissensus, The New Verse News, Borderless Journal, The Palestine Chronicle, The Cadre Journal and Indian Periodical.