The Day Heaven Came Down

by Shikhandin

[box type=”bio”] Shikhandin’s prose and poetry have been published in all five continents. She won the first prize in the Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat

Short Story Competition 2012. Her poem “Cleavage” was in the long list of the Bridport Poetry Competition 2006 and also a finalist in the 2010 Aesthetica Creative Arts Contest. She won the first prize for a poetry review contest hosted by Cha: An Asian Literary Journal in October 2011. Her short story for The Verb Magazine’s “Looking at You Contest” won honourable mention and an excerpt was posted in the October 2007 issue. Her poem in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal was nominated for a Pushcart (2011) and also for the Best of Net Anthology by the same magazine. She has won many prizes in poetry contests in India. An excerpt from her story “Guitar” was shortlisted in the Art House Competition in August 2010. A poem by her – March” – was commended in the Writelinks’ Spring Fever Competition (UK), 2008. One of her stories – “Ähalya’s Valhalla”- was among the notable stories of 2007 in Story South’s Million Writers’ Award (USA). She was one of the participating poets at the Prakriti Poetry Festival, December 2008, in Chennai. She was a featured poet at the Poetry Slam organised jointly by the US Consul Chennai and The Prakriti Foundation in December 2009. She was an invited poet for the Hyderabad Literary Festival (2010) organised by Muse India and Osmania University Centre for International Programmes. She is one among ten Indian poets to feature in an exclusive forthcoming anthology edited by Jayant Mahapatra and Yuyutsu RD Sharma. [/box] [box]A wet monsoon day is also a day of loss. Here’s a poem by our Writer of the Month, Shikandin.[/box]

That grieving wet monsoon day
when we thought the world would die
and there would be no redemption. At all.
Ever after!

So imagine my surprise
when Heaven came down
and scooped you up
in copious soft-as-cloud arms
and took you
took you
took you away.

That day
is awash in my memory. Awash
with rainbow streaked sunshine.
The abundance of tears
pooled deep beneath eyelids
and the remembrance
of your soft-as-petals feet.
Your feet that never
touched ground. Never
stepped down. All those years
that you lay
serene and accepting
on your iron bed

My darling
I celebrate
that day.