“Billions of blue blistering barnacles!”
said Captain Haddock from the rubbles of a house
in Kathmandu, where lived a family of four.
All faithful readers of the adventures of Tintin.
Their neighbors had a grandfather clock,
made of pure walnut, a John Ellicott knock-off;
its hourly chimes lulled children to sleep at night.
Now it sleeps with the remains of the children in the dust.
The airport was a happy place last week,
today, it’s filled with doctors and people wearing masks.
The baggage claim line seems never-ending.
Addresses, one meshed with another, lay outside.
Like a pyramid lacking geometry.
* * *
Sayantan Ghosh was born in Calcutta, India in 1986. He currently lives in a 11×11 room in New Delhi and works as an editor for a publishing house. His work has been published in Northeast Review, Reading Hour, The Bangalore Review, Running Out of Ink, eFiction India, Eastlit, Clockwise Cat, Strip Tease – The Magazine, Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Antiserious, Fried Eye, and Vomit. His chaotic blog, where this 100-word story originally appeared, can be read at http://sayantansunnyghosh.blogspot.in/.
