Transience
She wants me to play with the clay toys she’s made from the river’s mud. It’s been a month since the river washed away her village. Since then, she has been living in a relief camp, trying to ease the ache of homelessness by moulding flood mud into fragile shapes. Her life has always swayed between a clay-bricked home and a tattered tent. Now, as a teenager, she no longer speaks her feelings — there are no words left, only silence in her barren eyes. She kneads that silence into clay. Before I leave, we build a tiny clay house together. She pours imaginary tea into a cup she has moulded and hands it to me.
midsummer moon —
I revert
to my former self
haikuKATHA, issue 52, February 2026
https://www.trivenihaikai.in/post/haikukatha-issue-52
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