Editor’s Note: This collaboration has spontaneity written all over it. The image came from Koushik with a hope to find some words and DoubleSpeak reached out to Zai who readily accepted to compliment the image with a quick poem. The collaborators do not know each other but their works find a organic connection in this piece.

Playing house

You- the two adults played house today.

One of you handed over divorce papers to another.

“I have never handed anyone a love letter but I at least get to do this”

You both chuckled at your joke but stopped as the silence dropped.

Did I ever play divorce as a kid?

You wondered as you ran your pen across the signature box.

You have frequently switched roles.

You became daddy and your childhood friend became mommy.

Or you were a kid when she was a granny.

She had thrown your whole dinner away

because you were too whiny.

“That’s your punishment for annoying me”

Then a crow ate the dinner made of biscuit patties.

Never divorce though…

But that’s how it is.

Big things in life are often trivial and tiny

like the signature box where you compressed the whole marriage

and ended it with two tiny dots under your sign.

Now you can eat that chocolate

and watch that new season of the series

where two people marry

and don’t feel sorry.

But as you watch the people glide by on the screen

or slide their hands under each others’ clothes

you feel pressure

of the wobbly grief pudding

growing inside your mind

It grow bigger and heavier

then it bursts and floods your body.

You ask aloud,

as the world darkens around you,

“is there any child who thinks 

playing house is ridiculous?

Does any kid discover the sham,

and promise themselves never to grow up?” 

Koushik Saha is an avid art enthusiast who is building a career in Graphic Designing. His hobbies include Theatre, Photography, Painting, Travelling. He hails from Panagarh, Paschim Bardhaman, West Bengal.

Zai is a film studies graduate but currently she is a PhD candidate in California. She hasn’t taken up creative writing in recent times as a hobby and been exploring different forms of writing; creative writing being one of them. She also does academic writing since that’s her work.