The father cut the umbilical cord even as the lights flickered. The newborn looked determined to survive. There was some perfunctory crying, but she calmed down as soon as she latched on to her mother’s breast.

“I will keep you safe,” her mother whispered.

Outside, the bombs had devoured everything.

Jahnavi Gogoi’s poetry has been published in Indian Review, Coffee and Conversations, RIC journal, Café Haiku, Presence, Five Fleas, Haiku Girl Summer, tsuri-doro, Enchanted Garden Haiku journal, Zen Peacemakers, Fresh Out: An Arts and Poetry Collective, The Daily Verse by The Wise Owl, Haiku Corner by The Japan Society, Shadow Pond Journal, The Leaf Journal, haikuNetra among others. She lives in a quaint town in Ontario, Canada with her family and occasionally tries her hand at fiction and essays.