The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

You Cannot Return The Award

The award comes with 
no return address, 
no accolades.

You suggest,
I should leave my spare key 
under it
outside the door.

Now a vine grows
round and round the award,
a garden gnome.

It guards
my heaven, my hell.
I try to forget it,
but it holds the key 

to the hollow where 
dreams and nightmares howl 
and fall in love with 
their own echoes.

Some People Struggle During The Rain

No longer I walk in the rain,
rather I amble farther inside me,
through the uneven plains,
odd palisades.
I stumble. I bleed.
Rain meets a corrugated fall.
The tin shade says,
"If it bleeds it is alive." 

We Don’t Ask The Right Questions

We should not ask why the solitary fishmonger sells fish with swelling bellies in a vegetarian and vegan only town and how he builds houses and keeps two women hurt and happy. We should ask who is the dark boy we do not see in the wild plot behind the boundary of the house we swept into last month. We do not see him. He is the lone playmate our daughter has, and his stories we hear over the dessert. 

We know the right answer and do not. Some moths plague our sundown panes. They ink swirling patterns in the gray blue firmament. Close your eyes, see them burst out of the flesh of the town. One moment, the veins of the settlement, roads, streets and lanes, will swell up and in the next, they will lie slackened.

A neighbour whispers to us about the open-air cremation ground where the members of the caste we cast away bid goodbye to the world. The town loved to hate them. They hid their abhorrence behind the words of equity. 

We listen to the tales of the deaths and the cause behind. 

We have too many answers. We cannot conceive enough questions.

Sometimes one of us find the other sitting through the night in front of the computer. The search engine stays open. It suggests queries. Neither we can choose nor we can form our own.

Our daughter tells us about her invisible buddy. His family went to another reality because his mother married someone beyond her religion. It seems everyone owns a gun that cannot be traced.