Whispers of deeply forgotten histories echo, reclaiming narrative power from silenced spaces, navigating deep loss and resilience within the heart's hidden chambers.
Old Dreams of Home, Kolkata Read Single →
- You were where the fennel seed was.
Caught in my gums.
Sharp and tricky, I curled my tongue into a knot
over a thousand parts of one second
Frustrated, I reached a finger in to pull you out
and flicked you away.
- What does a grandmother do to survive?
Mine fed me thrice a day for twenty-five years—food, love, lies.
While she was full with all her own swallowed refusal
What is left of her now that I am gone?
She still feeds—secrets, curses, leftovers
To the crow outside the window.
- I was the taut bends of live fish
Flailing, stretching inside a perched cauldron
Calling to be butchered.
And draining out the siren songs from elsewhere was the fish-man’s call,
A huge katla hung around his neck, dying.
He was trying to sell me a lie.
There remains an orange peel map under my collarbones,
By the time we meet, it will rot into nothing or I will have shed it off.
Outside the airport you will find my fingertips disintegrating and the dust will choke you.
The bird in the tiny nest outside the house has died,
Its numbered days eaten by the broken twig nest.
Look for the nest inside my mouth.
Q
Three cats have died since
And now bloom into trees in the backyard.
And in my enlarged ventricle, you will find their fruit.
All of this will ask for space next to you on the bed tonight.
You still have some time to say no.
Apabrita is a PhD researcher at Durham University. She works on South Asian women's writing and conflict studies. She has previously written and published poetry for writingwomen.co. She also works as a translator and is currently translating a volume of her mother's poetry. She now tries to take time out from her PhD to focus on writing poetry more often.
