Acerbic Fruit

By Anindita Sarkar

She knew morning sickness was a siren

of the bitter fruit, she was cradling,

You always get into such troubles,

she imagined her mother regretting.

She was a girl of fourteen

her dreams were coloured with

the contentious debates of her parents

on the issue of her vocation,

where she needed to enter child-free.

Her head was filled with equations

struggling with the valencies that are at odds,

her self-absorbed boyfriend, wouldn’t  accept

the sapling rooting inside her.

She hoped for a secret door

that could loop back to the starting point,

a solitary furrow was all she needed

To hide her bloated abdomen,

 she prayed for a gale, storm, or a hurricane

anything that could save her

from holding the fruit

in her hands clinking with the sound of bangles.

A bottle of pesticide beguiling posed on the window sill

she felt a desire to inflict an irreversible damage.

 *

Anindita Sarkar is pursuing Mphil degree in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. She has a MFA in EnglishLiterature. She is from Kolkata,India. She is also an UGC Junior Research Fellow. Her works have recently appeared in Indolent Books, Ariel Chart, Flash Fiction Friday, Scars Publication, Twist and Twain.

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