Postmarked by Fate
Sandeep Kumar Mishra
A child arrived on a doorstep last Tuesday morning, wrapped in a weathered bag, bearing a worth of stamps, and wearing the weight of a mother’s longing. The child was not lost. The child was not abandoned. The child was sent.
The postman, accustomed to parcels of paper and ink, hesitated at the sight of the scrawny boy, his limbs poking through the bag’s frayed edges like misplaced postage. “It is not every day,” said Deepak, the postman in question, “that you deliver a letter who can speak.”
The boy, unnamed in official records, had been placed in the care of the Indian postal system by a mother with no ink, no paper—only a message too urgent to be left unsent. “Perhaps she thought words would not be enough,” mused Deepak, slicing a piece of national fruit of India and pressing it into the child’s palm. “Perhaps she believed the message had to breathe.”
With every step of the journey, the boy became more letter than limb. The postmaster at the district office, unimpressed and unamused, wrinkled his nose as he affixed a delivery slip to the child’s forehead. “One cannot return a letter once it has been stamped,” he muttered. And so, into the cavernous belly of the sorting center the child went—buried in a sea of ink-scented envelopes, tucked between whispered secrets and confessions unsent.
Darkness. Then movement. Then stillness. Then, again, movement.
When light returned, it was in an unfamiliar city light—thin, grey, hesitant. The air carried no trace of mangoes, only the sterile chill of a city devoid of warmth. A pale-faced postmaster, his fingers smelling of ink and impatience, examined the boy but did not truly see him. He traced a gloved hand over the stamps, lips pursed, then waved the postman on.
The final stop: a doorstep veiled in morning fog, a brass knocker dull with time. The impatient knock. The shuffle of feet. The door creaking open. And there, standing on the threshold of two worlds, was the recipient of the letter—
A father, long gone. A father who had left not knowing he would be followed. A father whose hands trembled as they touched the skin of a child now lined with invisible ink, the unspoken words of a woman who could not send paper, only flesh.
He reached out. The boy did not move. The father did not read. And yet, in the silence between them, the message was received.
Sandeep Kumar Mishra is an artist, an author, a teacher and an editor. He has published 15 books, translated into more than 20 international languages, shortlisted for more than 50 international literary and arts awards and has been published in all six continents inhabited by humans. https://www.sandeepkumarmishra.com
Art: Margo Hoover is an artist and teacher based in Oakland. She paints with bright colors that combine personal symbolism with religious and mystic iconography. You can learn more about her work at margoisbusy.art