Listening To A Conch
written by: Jyothsna Phanija
Five seconds before going to school,
I took the conch that I caught from the seashore yesterday.
Closer to the ears,
It recreated the sound of the sea, with a slight mismatch of the choreography of salted sand.
My fingers inside the sand, for the touch of the conch, had telescopes of that hour.
I regret keeping that conch in my disarranged bookshelf,
the conch lost its pure echo between torn pages and pencil marks,
slate pencils I traded from a friend in pre-school.
I take my new pencil and write the word today
Erasing yesterday written on its delicate rim.
yet, yesterday’s wounds linger on my skin.
Like a little girl imagining her mother’s hand as the little girl’s daughter,
insists on feeding yesterday’s candy to the hand.
past, I wish to be erased from the frame
of that clock-like conch.
- Listening To A Conch - April 10, 2023
