No. 7 – The Injections By Nandhini G. Natarajan   The little girl contracted an infection and needed daily injections for a whole year. Her aunt, a doctor brought the injections home.   Every evening, the girl laid on her side scared, and she whimpered….

Normal   Not now or never again will life be Normal! Objection, I’d like to call you out on that. Explain Normal? Right..am okay..let’s see…before Covid-19 everything was normal! May I once again object? Each and every one of us is different not normal! All…

Two old women got into a spat One left the room, the other just sat Who was winner of this argument? The one who stayed or the one who went? What does it matter who really wins? Two old women no longer are friends

The animals flourished as the humans shrank away. Maybe some of the comebacks were exaggerated – dolphins didn’t really swim in the Venice canals, did they? – but the bears were free to roam in Yosemite, species that had been declared extinct suddenly emerged again,…

haboob dust storm suffocating brown blackout rolling through the waterless desert waste sucking vacuuming up dryness desert dirt dumping its contents on the cityscape city coughs chokes cringes crouches cowards

I normally don’t use the word. I mean, how could I? Whose standards, yours or mine? Whose conventions, society’s or family’s? Definitions slide off a palm like silken scarves, the meaning lost in context. Two years ago, we hugged, two years later, I peered at…

this house your front door, blue – hers, purple – mine, green – but they open onto us, just the same behind this door, you care for a newborn (tears from lack of sleep – yours, not the child’s) behind that door, she cares for…

The night is for sleeping. All the world is at peace but I channel surf till my fingers burn and my head swims with images that are not my own. I close my heavy lids, but my mind speaks nonstop – buzzing like an angry…

Build Back Normal   Can’t wait to get back to Normal. How most people did things in the Before Times, the way we dressed, behaved, interacted.   Old normality wasn’t Normal.   Perhaps it’s too late for a Better Normal. Already roaring back to the…

Normal- Is what I imagine the world would be if it was in hiding, getting by on a sliver of illumination scared of its own shadow. I used to hide myself as well from everything- under layers of distance often under layers of clothes but…