It was a thin moon that drowned that night

*****

The scream detached itself from her grasp and echoed across the land.

Pausing. Not once. To catch its breath.

*****

Flames. like her eyes. questioning.

*****

She woke up with a start. Something was not quite right. There was darkness where her eyes used to be. Thick. Impenetrable. Palpable darkness. The kind that has a life of its own. The kind that can be heard. Breathing heavily.

Feeling her way tentatively. Inch by inch. Making sure not to slip. Or fall. Trying to focus. Cautious. Pausing every step of the way. Stopping to take her breath. Her fingers numb and exhausted with the exertion. Crawling slowly over the terrain of her face. She made her way to where the eyes should have been.

Her fingers went over the edge.

Into a well of inky darkness.

*****

Rigid. Imprisoned in bed. Staring at the ceiling.

She saw the spiders scurrying away. Fearing a deluge.

Straining every muscle into stillness. She reached between her legs.

And pulled up a dead wish. Suffocated in its own blood.

Unfettered. And furious. The blood.

Flooding the land.

Once begun. There was no stopping it.

*****

The candle’s last act before it sank into its grave of wax was to caution us of the long dark that would shroud the city like a cloud that has not known a beginning or an end or even a break for many miles in a sky that had disappeared as soon as it had appeared in what may have been a millisecond of sunlight for it wasn’t enough it had warned to live the life of the shadow seemingly safe and unaffected by the glare of light unaware that the dark would soon starve the white of the wall leaving you no space to walk or run or manoeuvre in a manner that would not make you uncomfortable or claustrophobic or simply sad that things had to turn out the way they had for there was no question of the fact that the candle had told the truth in its dying moments saying clearly that there would be no place left to hide your head in shame that will surely follow like the price that is lurking behind every corner of the mind for we must remember that there is always a price to be paid like the stranger you had picked up last night and to whom you had made unsatisfactory love because that was the only way you knew to hurt yourself more and more as had become the norm or a habit as you often called it and therefore like all habits it must be paid for because Cassandra had not lied or covered up on the contrary she had merely acted her part remembering in the nick of time that sometimes it is better not to look the present in the eye as if it were the future you had so badly wanted to escape and step back into your past in fact she had pleaded that it would be a folly to run out into the eclipsed noonsun for it may blind you into the all seeing fate of the blind man whose countenance hides the frenzy of the seer that is running amuck inside the four or is it six walls of his head in a dance that would make faint the dervishes that have taken control of his body and maybe even his soul that very part he had used so effectively while bargaining with the dark prince who was now ready to Shylock his part of the contract regardless of the bloodletting that would definitely follow as it often does after such nights when those that rule sharpen their blades and get ready to slit throats on a night that will only be remembered for its length and its bloodcurdling screams of women and children who should not have met the fate divined for them by those that are marching the route of the long knives taking part in the pogroms that ravage my poor country while I watch from my place in exile playing with the paralysis that only the impotent know when it is their turn to impregnate the bride on that first night when her womb will shed tears of blood that will only raise a mere giggle from the servants who will whisk the sheet into the morning’s wash and simply go about their business while you and I will await the tide in a dress rehearsal for our final drowning

Naveen Kishore is a publisher, writer, photographer and theatre practitioner

(This appeared in the print as 'Citizen's Diary')