I stood at the helm of frothy, sunbeam-kissed sinister April, when the buoy was in the middle of the ocean. Golden locks of mother turned into fish-hunting harpoons, as the sinister April vouched for a day of joy. What were we looking at?

Tall lighthouses, remnants of sunbaked mud walls, fish-scales, windchimes, litany of ice-cream seller, and brown bosoms! The salt tasted of desire and the morning rain splashed into beads that jewelled my mother’s forehead. That sinister April, when the gruelling cosmos raised a furore, I was born to die, to fall into the crevices of the deranged seashore. The waves were still now, mother’s furrowed forehead showed an eternal wait, for a world that was in limbo!

~Sreetanwi Chakraborty

Kolkata, India