she has inherited her father’s cracking bones andher mother’s dimpleshestands in front of the mirror,Ma’s green dupatta resting against her chest, andsuddenlyIt is 1988 all over again.It isher mother with crisp hair and a raised eyebrow, herfather with a stuttering mouth and doe eyes, it isa friend’s wedding, thescent of milk sweets and crushed flowers in the curtains.She writes with her left hand, thecharcoal indentations on her arm shaped likeher thatha’s battle wounds, sometimes,you canhear the whirring of fighter-planes in her left wrist, shecarries her older brother’s laugh in her belly, histee shirt on her back, she canfit into the same spaces her mother can,her body has been taught to accommodate. She lets herselfbloom at night, body unravelling, only cicadas to keep her company.You canstill hear her grandmother’s poetry in her collarbone and when shesings, her aunt’scroaky tenor seeps out. If youlook closely, thetendons on her neck resemble the patterned vines creeping up their Chennai home and onrainy days, she can hearlittle girls playing whispered games in the courtyard, empty,when she rushes towards the sound, with onlytraces of laughter left to peep out ofsepia photographs.Thetrees still bend down to kiss her face,mistaking her silhouette for her grandmother’s and shestill gets lost in the ridges of her body, trying to find out which parts came from where becauseit is not easy to trace lineage, she has tried, time and again,palmistry and cartography merging until shecannot tell the difference between her hand and a map butit is even harder to unpeel the lineage you do not want to carry, toundo the brashness under the voices of the men of the house,reclaim all the space that was left untouched by the little girls in the courtyard, toforgive the mistakes of your loved ones, but she islearning, she isintertwining her fingers with the branches of her family tree, yetallowing her wings to unfurl around the monsoon breeze, this isthe unmaking of a legacy, yetthe remembering of a legacy, this isa reconstruction, this isa re-learning,this islegacy,come home,this islegacy.