calcutta is a city of corpses — corpses of memories, corpses of aspirations, corpses of failed ambitions. corpses stay buried in the roads here; corpses stay hidden in the back of our minds. calcutta is a haunted house of the people you thought you buried. the phantoms stretch out their hands and beg you to pull them out of oblivion.

so i pretend the stain between my fingers isn’t from nicotine. so i pretend i choke on the smoke, though i never learned how to breathe fresh air. so i walk with the volume of my headphones turned up. so i pretend i know what i am.

calcutta is a city of corpses. a city of skinwalkers — people wearing the skin of who they wish they were, people wearing the skin of those they wish they’d outrun. calcutta is a city of corpses: corpses of relations you wish you could sanitize yourself off of, corpses of relations you wish you could have kept alive with cpr.

so some kid listens to Aftermath loud enough to drown out their parents fighting. so some kid walks home late because they think they aren't ready for the exam of life yet. so some kid saves their lunch money to buy cancer rolled in white paper. so some kid pretends that names don’t have antecedents.

calcutta is a city of corpses — corpses staring at you, waiting for you to resurrect them; corpses you wish you could exorcise yourself off of; corpses you wish you could bring back to life. calcutta is the city of পিছুটান. calcutta is a city of corpses, corpses rigid with rigor mortis.

calcutta keeps you within herself like a mother who doesn’t want her child to leave her hearth again. corpses of memory crowd each lane, each footpath, carrying the steps of everyone who walked them before you.