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BIJIT SINHA - BLOODMOON

6/4/2022

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Bijit Sinha is currently working as an English Mentor at The Ardee School, Gurugram, He has previously worked as an Associate Desk Editor at Cambridge University Press India. He has also published his short stories in two motivational anthologies, Hope Reborn and The Other, and in online journals, such as Down in the Dirt and The Stray Branch. He is presently working on two manuscripts concerning with mythopoeic fiction.

​Bloodmoon

​It is a stormy night indeed, as I gaze unto the heavy laden sky from the precipice of bronzed contraptions. What I have perceived of her is not as obvious as it may seem. After all, the moon dances through the heavens with a subtle stride.
With a steady direction, one gradually captures her in full glory until she eventually disappears from my view. Then there is the definitive illusion that the moon is going to descend from the heavens.
Even then, I lose sight of the movement of the clouds, and then direct it all to the transfixed one. I lose sight of what in fact had initially directed my gaze.
The moon stays unmoved.
It was never a given that she would notice me. Rather, I had felt her gaze creeping up on me as soon as my back was turned. For even as I profess my love on the easel, I doubt she would have ever walked the distance and reach out to me.
For she might still retain her brilliance as the moon, and yet never traipse upon the darkened array of clouds branching from me. I can certainly recount several times that we have passed each other, and with each passing encounter, I have been able to capture the minute details of her presence, be it the way she ties her hair in an upright bun or the stride that she maintains.
But never has been there any sort of utterance between us. Each movement of hers is captured well away from her physical presence, for it must not tend to the flattering perception I have made of her in her absence.
As I tread upon the unkempt path of the dark unknown into the heart of the Ridge, there is no retracing back.
This night could easily be my initiation, as I traverse over to the farther parts of the forest laid amidst the concrete skyline, and perceive her celestial movement in all its glory.
Within this uncharted expanse, one might have heard hoarse tales of the wandering spirits of a foregone and oft-forgotten rebellion roaming around in the vicinity. I would rather want to distance myself away from the airs of civility contained within the 1857 memorials of the unnamed rebels wasted in the pilfering dust.
The unnamed individuals listed upon the polished stone of marble, registered in the dusty archives of the glorious days gone by, are seemingly free of their antagonisms against the colonial institutions. Even still, they turn over in their inexistent graves, as they are celebrated within the red-bricked premises, for which they had shed their blood over.
They are wrongfully remembered in the marked gravestones of the monumental establishments, of which they were never a part of. It seems as though after they were freed from their mortal vessels by being dumped in the blood-soaked rivulet, they had ascribed themselves to the wrong sort of immortality.
That is something I would never desire for her in the first place.
It is a moonlit night indeed, as I secure my space upon the creaking bridge while hoping to capture a definite glimpse of her. The sensation of the swaying winds draw near me, as the unnatural chillness makes itself known to my presence.
Nevertheless, the canvas remains immovable from the stationary rotten planks of the yesteryears. And even though the clouds might still be ranked in the lines of the unfaithful, they are destined to be blown away by the turgid winds of yore.
But this time, I would make out my mortal calling against the billowing of the wind, as it envelops her again and again.
I make an incisive cut across my wrist and smudge it on the canvas, thus forming the bloodmoon.
But the resultant seems to be a far cry from what I had perceived. For the moon seems to be too afraid of the consequence.
It phases through the black masses over and over, as the slashes on my wrist occur repeatedly in my ardent need for more ink.
It does not help matters, as she takes a momentous lead while I keep smudging upon the darkened strokes of the coagulated mass.
After all, I would be the one who would drop to my knees first, wouldn't I?

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