Her childhood is trapped
in the constant shadow of
the lizard gulping up the
dead small delicate flies
gathered around the now switched off
tube light
The light was mistaken for the Sun.
In the memories of her adolescence
A desperate fly always tries to fly
but fails every time
and ends up lying dead
at the bottom of the glass jar
that she used to keep
in her dollhouse.
She has been carrying
A cotton ball draped
in ointment between her
two thighs since the day
she has grown up
all of a sudden in a dark storage room.
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is available on Amazon.
Featured image: Junaid Ur Rehman Jamil Ahmed / Unsplash