Special Edition: Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal

Backyard views

Backyards take me back

to childhood fears

spectral ghosts, blood dragons

and masked kidnappers

lurking behind trash cans

dismissed and labelled 

irrational, nonsensical

Indulgence in fantasy

That was then

Older, when I claimed to see

an illuminated asteroid  

circling above the wooden fence

They all turned a deaf ear

“Again, her imagination running wild”

floated to my ears

I stood transfixed behind the curtain

shaking in fear

How could I make them hear?

The low wheezing hum

like bees inside a metal drum

Then came the wind 

a spiral, silent, chilling

And with a sighing hiss, it opened its eye

gobbling up the grazing cattle, 

gentle and unaware, lifted in slow arcs,

legs twitching in stunned silence

their shapes vanishing into a silver mist

Branches bent in reverence

And the ground held its breath

By morning, the field was empty

no hoofprints, no cries 

just circles burned into the grass

and a silence thick with knowing

Now, they watch me differently

whenever clouds pass, strange

Or dogs bark at the corners of the air

They whisper less and listen more

Because I saw and I still see

What they once called imagination,

now recognised as intuitive powers

***

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Setu, May 2025