Poem : Haunted House

When I say the words 'Haunted House',

what comes to your mind?

An iron gate, too easy to go past,

and an old man asking you not to.

Bats flying at the slightest whispers,

and crickets chirping like they always do.

The sunlight never reaching its rooms,

still shadows seemingly ruling these places.

An interconnected net of spider webs,

existing but in the tiniest of spaces.

Maybe the ghost lives in the attic,

waiting to pounce on the wannabe explorers.

Or maybe it's a safe-house for Deatheaters,

who are trying to escape the powerful Aurors.

And that makes complete sense,

but hear me out once.

There is this house across my street,

which looks perfectly normal at first glance.

But the family lost the father last year,

and this fact seems to live in its nuance.

I had known these people for over 18 years,

and something, I feel, is just not right.

The people I knew have dissolved in shadows,

and the house is filled with a lot of quiet.

The sons talk a lot less to each other,

and the mother seems to be mostly alone.

The married daughters seldom visit the house,

and the place feels like a no man's zone.

I wonder if this place is littered all over,

by the memories of a family that was once complete.

And maybe these people aren't growing apart,

but the pain of loss is just too much to beat.

Maybe in silence, they can hear him again,

and in the empty corridors, his smiling face they can see.

And maybe they don't want to stay too long,

as it reminds them of all that they couldn't be.

And the truth is I am not sure if any of it is true,

and I don't even know if I want to be right.

But this question just keeps echoing in my head,

"Is this what a haunted house looks like"?

-Sushant Kumar Das