Familial Events | Tapas Ranjan Mohanty

Alone in her room, dank with adult diapers And asthmatic gasps, She sharpens her tongue On an ancient night She has plucked from history. One could hear the rasp through The shut doors. Her ageing Heart flutters with excitement as She stabs the Air: “Vishnu Vishnu!” “Shiva Shiva!”*. A cold rusty cylinder stands stiff and erect. Sealed inside, the few gulps of air that might prove to be her last someday. With bated breath it waits. Morning arrives and she Nicks mum, for a trial. It is sharp as ever. The clock ticks louder. Inside I watch mum spit words, A regret, a something into The sink which washes down its neck With last night’s leftovers Desperately drops a steel bowl on the granite counter. Clang! The first words in her Morse vocabulary. On this side of wall my father, his left frozen after a thrombosis, Turns his right to the world and Feigns a deep sleep.

Tapas Ranjan Mohanty works as an Engineer in Hyderabad. He is an avid Photographer and also an amateur poet.His works have been published in Brown Critique, Cerebration.org, Reading Hour, Chicken Soup Series, Everydaypoets,Muse India and other magazines.