Gulbarg Society

If you look up the gutted houses today
you will be greeted by a mass of bougainvillea
spilling out
of the charred walls
and you would have to be morbid
(but not very, this is low-hanging fruit)
to liken this spilling-out
to another kind of spilling
gutting
overflowing
that happened here a while ago
(but not very, not long enough).

Nature aids forgetting.

The screams get buried
in endless legalese
as time papers over
creepers over
the walls that broke, the flesh that burnt,
the voices that broke with pleas
(but not many, not enough to count in our memories)
and I look up at the walls of this Gulbarg Society
and wonder at how green can be so wily
so willing to collaborate
with yet another cycle of moving on
even as voter reports are amassed
and kerosene gathered
for yet another culling
—just another clean break,
before bougainvilleas sprout.

(For context, look up the Gulbarg Society massacre.)