White.  Crisp, spotless, hauntingly white. The walls, doors, windows, curtains, bed linen, furnishings. White too are the shards of moonlight falling on the designer stone-grey floor.  His pockmarked face twitches time and again. The palsy afflicted right side. Tucked inside his feather and down duvet he is sleepless tonight. Like most other nights. He watches the well-starved form of his new wife rise and fall in rhythmic breathing.  Tip-toeing to the study, he pulls out a plain white sheet of paper and scribbles on it with a thick-nib black marker pen. The dank air gets filled with the pungency of ink solvent. Names, all of them; his bi-polar ex-wife, his neurotic mother, his helpless father and the younger brother whose sanity he cannot digest. Shredding the paper, he dumps the pieces into the dustbin. This might help when the sheep fail, so his shrink had said.

blood moon
tracing a lifetime
in inkblots

Yesha Shah