My new apartment has the silence of a graveyard.
But also the respite.

The previous tenant hanged herself from the ceiling.
Blood still drips from the cracks
Like rain in an eternal monsoon.
Some of her things remained.
Gowns with cigarette holes,
Books by Plath, Woolf, Hemingway.
Finger-nail scratches on doors
Echoes in the hallway.

When the phone rings, I suspect
It’s she, calling to ask for something left behind.
Maybe a funeral, an apology, sleeping pills
Things I have started wanting
Already.
Now I am assured,
If Nietzsche could be trusted
that God was dead,
It must have been a suicide.

– Bijaya Biswal