Shakti

Flash Fiction

I watched her pace back and forth colorful shawl blowing in the breeze at the park’s entrance. Bags stacked upon one another, last remnants of her life, a portable home in the dirt. With every passing she stares penetratingly, haunting my absentminded retreat from the office on my lunch break.

Images of Joti pop in my head. The little indentured girl I met in Jaipur. With her huge almond eyes dancing from beneath long lashes innocently belying the strength it took to run an entire household at twelve. She had been bought and sold and forged her way to a new city with a different language, her plight in this incarnation. Durga upon her tiger; I never say her complained.

She taught me to make Naan, laughing tenderly as I attempted to roll out the dough, like an old soul. Yet I wanted to rescue her. Take her back to America with me and give her a different life than the one in which she was cast.

Now years later day after day this older vision of her paces before me like an apparition. As I drudge along to and fro from the cage of my daily grind. I am uneasy inside her devi gaze. It's as though she can see into the darkness, lost to the madness of being invisible to the world. What is it that makes me weary of her attention? Perhaps it’s my own reflection staring back at me.

Reviews

[Horizon K.]

Powerful... Those last four lines in particular, and I am left feeling sad and helpless at the thought of these lost souls and the cycle of despair they represent, as that child born under the dark star will meet with this future, an eddy of dust at our feet. There is a strength here too though, that you could connect with the child, and in the doing, find compassion for the woman. we need reminders of our own humanity served to us this way...

[DCT ponderings]

Thank you so much for reading. I love your review.