Ms. Sankalpita Mullick, India (Winging through Gloom: Poetry of Hope and Recovery)

Sankalpita Mullick
Sankalpita Mullick’s book “Metamorphosis-Legends Come to Life” was published when she was 14. She has been awarded the nationwide LaughGuru creative writing competition, Hindustan Times Essay Writing scholarship, and Literoma Young Achiever Award. She edits legal books and has been published in Kistrech Poetry Festival. Sankalpita has received a fully-paid scholarship from the US-State-Department for a short course at the University of Iowa. She is one of the founding members of the online writing platform mindmeltworldwide.com  


KNOCKS OF HOPE

10 Missed Calls; the tune ringing in her ears and her head,
the voice of the phone stifled by the constantly pressed power button, 
she lies still on her bed.

12 Missed Calls, her phone ringer switched off, the only sound the clicks of a typewriter.
Clinks and clanks of the buttons against the metal against the fingers of her neighbour.
Divided by paper thin walls that seem the only divider, 
between the writers on both ends. 

20 Missed Calls, presumably from the neighbour who knocked on her door daily,
to read out her poetry and wake her from her opened eyed slumber.
"Once upon a time..."
Her ears perked up when the neighbour sang of kings and kingdoms, 
wise men and wisdoms,
the little girl on the street looking into a window,
the little boy across the street jumping into puddles, disrupting their flow.
She sat up in bed when her neighbour returned to recite tales through the door:
Poems about birds and bees and the little nests in trees.
About the stratosphere and the ocean floor and love and loss and open doors.

The next day when the phone rang, a voice echoed breaking the silence, 
"Hey...yes, now we can ... we can talk.”
She walked out of the room and knocked on her neighbour’s door to no response.
She whispered teary eyed, now with tears of joy, “Your poems helped me pick up my phone… some line about a woman freeing herself from being trapped...it really helped me break my self-imposed mental lock.”


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