The Blue Slippers

By Nayanthara S

She cleans and wipes the tiny slippers thrice daily,
lest they smell of dirt in the rain-soaked forests,
strewn with serpentine creepers and rotten flesh of beasts unknown.

She scrubs the blue contours, inch by inch,
quietly, slowly, pausing now and then,
lest she startles the invisible baby feet
that snuggles in the cosy, padded enclosure.

She has been doing this every day,
without fail, for the past three years.
As she examines their secret corners
with the precision of a goldsmith,
she feels relieved;
she holds them closer, closer to her chest,
for now they smell like her long-lost son.

A pale Sun drowns over the horizons,
An ocean wells up in her eyes...
Somewhere, a raging elephant with blood-drenched tusks
shatters the earth and the sky.
A helpless whimper echoes through the monstrous jungle,
and all that remains are shreds of cloth and a pair of tiny slippers.


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