There is nothing harder, more heart rending, than to accept, to embrace the sad fact that a fellow poet ceases to exist, to create.

We mourn Reethika’s death, so untimely, unexpected, unnecessary, so unthinkable. What demons ravaged her sensitive soul are no doubt beyond our comprehension, the facts behind her action no clearer to us today than the day she was found in a pool of blood along with her two year old son.

The police call it a murder suicide. Her friends and acquaintances swear that she betrayed no signs of the turmoil when they met/spoke to her for the last time. They all share the same vacant, scared eyes of the haunted as they search futilely for answers that elude.

Reethika ‘s work was published in several poetry journals in addition to her books. Vazirani was a writer-in-residence last year at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Later this year, she was to join the faculty at Emory University in Atlanta. She won the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for her book, "World Hotel," and a Barnard New Women Poets Prize for her first, "White Elephants," published in 1996.

In her poem Lullaby, she said
I would not sing you to sleep.
I would press my lips to your ear
and hope the terror in my heart stirs you.

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