Roadside

They peer at us, the dead, from behind their

makeshift roadside shrines, wondering why their

demise is tacked to the place of it along with

faded photographs and plastic flowers rather than their

bedroom, say, with the row of shoes like

yawning mouths, or the empty seat in the

classroom, or the blinking cursor on a

blank screen in a busy office, or the

spare place at a table replete with

furtive glances—but life soon scours new

courses for its flow and the dead are left in

muddy backwaters or beside dusty roads where the

speeding traffic riffles the tributes and

muffles the ghosts shouting something about

profit from loss.

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