Four Clover Life- By Namrata Shailendra Singh

There are two people you want dead right now-except one is already dead, but you want her to die again. A more painful one- like being pushed off the cliff and down she goes into the deep blue waters of the Pacific. She doesn't know how to swim, and that makes the climax more interesting to you. And for him, you want a cook's knife and his skin. You don't have a mental disorder; you are not on Prozac or Alprazolam, and you definitely don't hallucinate- except when you find the scorpions crawling over your body. Their tiny legs like needles, more like arrows, poking at your crows' feet, your armpits, your collar bones, and then a sharp poke, like some pesky jumping cholla on your breast, stinging your nipples. You frantically seek the scorpion, only to find him in a faraway land in the Chinatown storytelling center or the Bloedel Conservatory, raising two girls now entering puberty. You wish(don't lie, it's more like a curse) the girl's scorpions who pi

                           It’s a busy morning, the kind where you stuff your mouth with french toast, dark golden, more burnt than cooked, leaving a smoky flavor, or that is what I say to you- it’s a kimchi grilled cheese sandwich, baby, just enjoy. You smile at me before gulping the coffee in one long swallow. Before you dash to the door, you make sure to leave some smokiness on my lips and inside my mouth too.  I blush, my heart spends most waking moments marinating in your thoughts and sleeping moments caramelized after our soft, tender lovemaking, the kind where the skin starts to melt and turn gooey like mozzarella enveloped in sweet brioche. We are in love, I am certain. That day we make a baby in the tiny galaxy of my womb.  It’s a busy afternoon, and we both are at work. We are both poring over our screens in our respective cubicles and then a ping on our friends' group chat- somebody has sent a love quote with three red hearts and a couple of Ws after an A. It reads -'

                 It starts when you are thirteen or fourteen, and sitting on the hard triangular seat of the red bicycle makes your crotch tingle. You move uncomfortably ( more like rubbing it hard there)and feel electricity race through your body. Soon you start liking the hard conical seat.  You like the bathroom mirror too, the one that tilts down, and how your body makes you feel: sexy. The unblemished skin, the curves, the two sweetest cherry tomatoes on your chest, and when your father knocks on the door, you set the mirrors straight, slip into your clothes, and vanish. At school, you meet people, the ones you call BOYS, and you realize you like almost everyone. EVERY SINGLE ONE.  However, the broad chests attract you the most, and you wish to be saved by them, to be your knight in shining armor, to save you from some fictitious torment of life and become yours forever and love you like princesses are loved. You listen to songs(strictly Bollywood) that encourage you to think ab

September is an impish month when summer and autumn play cat and mouse. One time a dollop of hot glow, another time, a dash of cool breeze. In the half-asleep morning, I teeter myself to the stove to make tea - a brown liquid in a brown ceramic pan, sweetened with brown sugar and just then, it goes- the electricity. I stand still, stare, blink and wonder how to jumpstart the morning when the battery has died? The body moves, but the brain lingers near the stove, holding the saucepan half filled with water. And so the next two hours go by doing the usual and mundane the one he and I have been doing nonstop for years two unpoised performers filled with exasperation- bathing the children, school uniforms, chobani and bananas, water bottles, and goodbyes. Two hours later, the electricity is back, and I hasten toward the stove Just then, he calls — my husband. He inquires about me and the tea "Common, you anyways had it in office, imagine me," I gripe "It&#

The toast burns to  obsidian crumbs as the putrid smell starts to soar interrupting the meditation of my words that I routinely slit my heart to pour. Does it matter if I bleed or not They concluded I am not a writer yet The story of a thousand days and night Not a cent, a dime, a quarter it gets. Yes, I have miserably disappointed the masses But my failure, though, is yet to come For I continue to blow the dandelion Until I choose to be done. A 2nd-grade nipper stands alone a body deformed by torrential pain  the ground beneath has cracked wide open as he flails to breathe and walk again how to feel warm in the arctic of grief when loved ones float far, far away the mother who packed his lunchboxes the father who gave him sobriquets Yes, life has struck him hard indeed But mind you, his defeat is yet to come For he continues to blow the dandelion Until he chooses to be done.  Sifting through  anguish, anger, and despair She stares at the  heap of hands-me-down In the white and  elite

                  You won't be pleased to hear this, but I am trying hard to forget you. A relationship is not some random data stored on a smartphone. When it starts taking space, you tap and delete, maybe empty the trash too. A relationship is more sticky, clingy, and slimy. And ours came tied by a milk-white cord, smeared in bright maroon blood and the deepest purple of the placenta.  I never told you this, but I have stopped eating chicken and goat meat. Over here, people eat all things alive—cigadas that emerge after 17 years of hibernation, sea urchins, and ostriches. The planet is burning; the news of a never-experienced-before cataclysm has now become commonplace. One step more, and we fall from the precipitous conditions we have manufactured for ourselves to our own end. I can see, feel, and hence I am trying to make reparations, seize the moment, and pivot to something better, more sensitive, more gentle, more humane. However, I am cooking salmon curry today. Somehow, I h

                  In my mother's head, my 30th birthday was some kind of Cinderella clock, but instead of my coach turning back into a pumpkin, it had her imagining that my youth and my eggs would soon shrivel up, wither away or die. She was thrown into disarray by a looming specter of "lonely singletons addicted to morphine and men for the lack of anything better: marriage. When it comes to a woman's life trajectory, my society, with its dogmatic paternalistic mentality, relies heavily on relics and risk aversion- something that I had bent every now and then.   The man I had broken up with had vamoosed after 16 months of a serious-confused relationship, he being serious and I being confused. One winter afternoon, standing on the 9th-floor terrace cafeteria of my office in Bangalore, I texted him with dramatic depth, "Talk to me or else I will jump down from this building." The knife cuts on my arms and palms, which I thought would give me an advantage, had fai