Cover Photo: A black and white photo of a young girl about ten yers old at a beach, t-shirt and shorts wet from the waves, about to walk into the water.
Photo courtesy of Joe Le Merou/Flickr

The Year It Poured

Houses were flooded, roofs were carried away in the wind...And a month before that, the condoms in my father’s wardrobe mysteriously disappeared.

Mumbai rushed to a standstill on the twenty-sixth of July 2005, under the heaviest deluge we had ever seen. Houses were flooded, roofs were carried away in the wind, and locked cars were found stranded by roadsides. And a month before that, the condoms in my father’s wardrobe mysteriously disappeared.

Blue Lagoon

“Pitter-pattering monsoon shower

setting my heart ablaze

in the wetness of this season

what is this fire inside me?”

I had never before witnessed such a breathing display of intimacy, such blatant disregard for what went into one’s mouth.

Meher Manda is a poet, short story writer, culture critic, and educator from Mumbai, India, currently based in New York City. She holds an MFA in Fiction, and is the author of the chapbook, Busted Models, published by No, Dear Magazine in Fall 2019.  Her work has been published and is forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, Epiphany Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere.