Junk

There’s so much still to suffer that even tediously waiting for a train that’s hours late would be a grateful interruption. People are digging in the burning soil with bare hands. My wife’s there. My mother, too. I was going to join them, but now I can’t. It’s as if I’ve become, without my consent, a junk collector. Strange items keep appearing outside the door: a pamphlet, “Human Beings against Music”; rusted bedsprings; a bundle of pencils with broken points; feathers from random birds. Someday, I suppose, children will ask me, “What was it like, the end of the owls?”

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

What Is Written

At age two, baby Suresh miraculously wrote the words yes and no on to foggy glass. His family gathered in awe around him wondering if he would write again, maybe?

With pencils, chalk, twigs in sand he wrote the words over and over.

What divinity was this, what genius? No one had taught him. Being pious people, his parents immediately told the household servants that all future decisions, big or small, would be made by baby Suresh.

“Please,” said Chef, “tonight shall I cook chicken or lamb?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” baby’s mother snapped. “He can only answer yes or no.”

From Guest Contributor Faiza Bokhari