Poornima Manco

Author

microfiction

Johatsu

by

If I told you I was okay, would you believe me?

Here, in the catacombs of anonymity, I have found peace, sanity and safety.

The first slap, a lover’s jealousy; the second, a husband’s right. By the time I ran, my body was a ravaged battleground. Overnight, the yonige-ya promised. They delivered too. But ten years planning escape hardly qualifies as overnight.

Today I live as a ghost, in a place scrubbed out on the maps. Johatsu, evaporated people of Japan, they call us. Poof! Gone, vanished, disappeared.

Does anyone care where?

Perhaps it’s best they don’t.

Heat Rising

by

Smoke curls around the cigarette as you lean over the stone parapet. The boisterous parade thumps below, bodies slick with sweat and paint. Dancers and contortionists, performers and clowns. Afternoon heat rising. You wave, then laugh at some indistinct comment, leaning out even more.

I fixate on the crack in the stonework, imagining it fissuring under you, giving way suddenly. And you falling, your mouth a silent o of surprise, your body trampled under masses of dancing feet. Then you turn around and catch my eye. A low chuckle escapes you. I shiver. The joke, after all, is on me.

Now

by

Curled within, buried beneath, I lie in wait. Uncertain when my time will come, instinctively knowing it will. Under the mounds of dirt that cover me, I remain dormant. But the age-old drumbeat of life throbs within, searching for an opportune moment.

Then – a tiny prickle, a crack, a sliver of light. Suddenly my world is drowned in water. Slowly I unfurl myself – stretching, feeling, climbing – one arm reaching upwards through the soil, a tendril curling towards a golden orb. As I leave my earthen womb, I exhale. The wait is over, the search complete. My life begins now.

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This piece was shortlisted recently in a micro-fiction competition requiring a 100 word article on the theme of ‘Searching’.

 

Obsession

by

Then there is that dimple in your shoulder, the one that my finger touches repeatedly, dipping in and out. In and out. At other times, it is your gap-toothed smile that catches my attention, a tunnel into that full-bodied laugh. Your hair, a curtain – thick, dark and heavy like the forests of our past. Your smell, like the sea – salty and full of secrets. My hand traces the curve of your stomach, lined by life and children. My eyes try to peer inside your soul. Each time we meet, I rediscover you. Only to lose you once again.