Trade of Terror
written by: Srijoni
My younger children bought toy guns on their birthdays.
Boom!
They’d shoot at their brothers for fun.
Now that I lay on the desolate land,
having ten thousand bullets perforated through my body,
like Bheeshma on his deathbed,
I reminisce about the golden days of their childhood,
their silly quarrels, foolish fights;
didn’t imagine it would aggravate to a catastrophe someday.
Now, all I can see above is a fragmented horizon,
fireworks blazing across a sky already grey with smoke,
blobs of blood left like remnants
on the dusty plate of their playground.
Shakunis trade on a bloody Kurukhsetra.
They’ve reduced cities to rubble,
their inhabitants are half-burnt pieces of meat,
tossed in debris, mixed with sauce all over.
I lay there, in the valley of death,
– a silent witness of this apocalypse,
dreaming hopelessly of a happy ending to the epic,
waiting for the wailings to subdue,
and for the sky to dress in white once again.
- Trade of Terror - September 22, 2025
