The blind roots curve and coil white in the sunless earth by Laila Rahman, Image courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery.
The silverfish will drown in water, yet he was not granted wings. He took to reading, first discount coupons and then fiction which was when he started dreaming about a world where the arthropods would wake up to be humans with breasts and fingernails. How does the eyeless silverfish know when he isn’t dreaming? So he eats what he reads to make living palpable in starch, relishing on words ending with –ing because then he feels like he is doing something. He wants to cram whole books from cover to end paper, suck marrow from spine, but all he can do in this non-dream insectarium is perforate tributaries that dry up. Inebriated with print the silver fish sometimes revels in his invertebrate essence and professes lust to the dictionary. But held in a close embrace, he is pressed into becoming a character unfulfilled who can be scraped off the sheet with a flick. He wants to be ink, but turns aberrant, wants to be legible, turns into a blot.
~ Sohini Basak
Sohini Basak has poems and short stories in print and online journals such as Ainanagar, Ambit, Litro, Lighthouse, Paris Lit Up, The Ofi Press, Muse India, Helter Skelter, and Eyewear. She has recently completed a creative writing degree from the University of East Anglia, for which she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury continuation grant for poetry.
