Khero Khata

KHERO KHATA / Scorching silence

Scorching in a way the April sun never was. / Scorching in a way a fever never feels. / It wasn't just grief

KHERO KHATA / Under the olive tree

Then you will vanish—becoming Amma, Chachi, Mami. No one will remember your name.

KHERO KHATA / Polychrome

I made my first kite out of white paper scraps; on my 16th birthday, it came to me that they needed a pop of color.

KHERO KHATA / The people within me

I am not a single name. Not a single wound.

KHERO KHATA / Fragments

Grey chips of rough cement  Rust rubble all around,

KHERO KHATA / Mosaicked wounds

This was the way it ended: not with fire, But carried quietly under sleep-beds,

KHERO KHATA / The moon is a cheeseball and we are effervescent

The moon is a cheeseball,  Cratered, yellow, and huge like your eyeballs 

KHERO KHATA / Wash your fruits

I rush to the mirror. My gums are pristine, no wound, no sin. But when I look back at the fruit, the truth reveals itself: the flesh is blackened, writhing with tiny, hungry mouths. The rot has teeth

KHERO KHATA / déjà vu

Moving mindlessly and / Etching every alley along the way / With verses devoted to you

April 5, 2025
April 5, 2025

The morgues are full

In Gaza, the names of the martyrs slip through silence, lost to a world too distracted to listen

April 5, 2025
April 5, 2025

Making headlines

We'll put up feigned politicians / And their fake promises instead

February 1, 2025
February 1, 2025

Exit wounds

Tell me I am not a house without exits. Leave

February 1, 2025
February 1, 2025

Fixed

The rain began at dusk, its cold fingers tracing the cracked panes of the house like an unwelcome visitor. By midnight, the storm had grown wild, wind howling through the trees, rattling the fragile bones of the dwelling. I stood before the door, my hand trembling on the tarnished brass handle.

February 1, 2025
February 1, 2025

Egg drop soup

The cream colored bowl held the steaming, almost translucent yellow broth with traces of white, garnished by an array of green onions slashed in an angle.

January 11, 2025
January 11, 2025

Kafka says

It’s been so long since we last spoke that I don’t think I can talk to you without confessing something. There you were, standing before me

January 4, 2025
January 4, 2025

De mi para ti;

I see her now, but not in the way I have always seen her—through the lens of service, of duty, of roles—but as a woman whose edges were softened long before I learned her name

October 28, 2024
October 28, 2024

The veil of shadow

He had consistently disregarded the villagers' accounts of bhoot-prets as local folklore. To him, they were just stories to scare the gullible

October 27, 2024
October 27, 2024

Trapped in the bite

I woke up with the taste of blood in my mouth

October 26, 2024
October 26, 2024

The ghost of Arun Das

Raise no alarm, if on a night dimly lit,