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Image by Jasmin Chew

Healing takes patience, the stitches need time to dry, then scab, then stop hurting. The scars remain like silver linings around a dark moment: You survived. You. Survived. 

 

Walking away is easier in the moment, anger and fear propel you forward, your feet thinking on their own. Run. 

 

But now, barefoot in the garden with memories of his hand rushing for her face she flinches when a butterfly flits over a shoulder. 

 

Curling her toes into the wet grass she grounds her feet. Growth can be any way. She grows taller underground. 

 

a wildflower 

       unwinding 

summer haze

Image by Hans Veth

In Passing

Five days before she passed away she texted from her sickbed an ocean away, that she was tired of hospital sounds. So, I stood in the middle of the garden and recorded the morning sounds: My beagle’s sniffles, chirping of birds, the distant honk of traffic, a hawker’s call from the adjacent street — mundane things. 

 

I sent her the 37 seconds of life.

 

last call of an unknown bird gathering dusk

Firdaus.JPG

Firdaus lives in Aligarh, a town close to New Delhi, India. She writes short stories, flash fiction, and poems about love and loss, family and relationships, stumbling across them in folds of ordinary lives. Currently, she’s the associate editor of haikuKATHA, a monthly online journal.

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