It was still dark, the rest of the house still asleep. She made herself a cup of coffee and sat down to write. Blood in a woman’s dream can mean many things, she wrote. It can mean the purging of life from tortured wombs—Kashmir, or Kosovo (Aleppo was still safe, as were Mariupol and Irpin). Or it can mean the beginning of that period of the month. Or that one just needs to wake up and drink some water. As she wrote, the sun rose, quietly licking the windows awake. Then she went back to sleep. In a new dream she felt thirsty, and the water she drank turned to blood in her mouth.

hull breach—
in the briny taste 
untold story 

Eugene Datta

is the author of the poetry collection Water & Wave (Redhawk Publications, 2024) and the story collection The Color of Noon (Serving House Books, 2024), winner of the first Walter Cummins Award for short fiction. His work has appeared widely both online and in print, with some anthologized, and translated into German, French, Arabic, and Italian. He has been awarded fellowships and residencies by Ledig House International Writers’ Colony (Omni, New York), Fundación Valparaíso (Mojácar, Spain), and Stiftung Laurenz-Haus (Basel, Switzerland). A native of Calcutta, he lives in Aachen, Germany.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Interview with Eugene Datta by Susan Tekulve in South 85 Journal (23 January 2025)