Sayantika Mandal
Sayantika Mandal (she/her) is an Indian writer. She completed her MFA from the University of San Francisco and is pursuing her PhD in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Georgia. Her writing has appeared in Short, Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices, The Citron Review, Indian Literature, Cerebration, The Times of India, and others.
Hemispheres
The moon is the only thing I have left
from another half of the earth.
I gave up
the knowledge of my ancestors—the secrets of the soil
the silty clay of the delta land
where rivers untangle their braids
the mud-scent of river mouths—where
they wait for rain in their earthen houses,
rice steaming in earthen pots,
shards of baked earth—
they leave behind;
for a screen with pixels and digits
encased in smudgy glass,
for concrete sidewalks,
frozen sandwiches,
mown grass bathed by sprinklers,
adobe-colored drywall behind
carefully shaped hedges
looking like anything but a tree.
I gave up
The Bengal monsoon
swelling rivers that garbs the land
with new silt, saplings of paddy push their
green heads out of the stagnant muddy water
the rich scent of slaked earth
after the first mango shower,
the frangipani, the sighing tuberose,
for a damp June fog that glues the dust
on my window pane, for
hungry wildfires,
chewing twig by twig, inching across
swathes of land, crackling branches,
a thousand splinters, smoldering wood
waiting for a feeble winter drizzle to sooth
I gave up
the cyclones—storms gushing in
the vacuum of a vapid
summer of still-life leaves gathering dust,
for cold waves of Pacific,
winding highway along jagged
edges of eroding cliffs,
wheeling gulls with splayed wings
greeting me with yellow beaks
I gave up
the fresh lime-green of paddy fields,
which metamorphose into gold
under the autumn sun
canary yellow mustard flowers
for
seas of
flaxen needlegrass
oranges dangling from
bare branches,
and grape vines creeping on
poles, fruits out of my reach—
I gave up
the rain-drenched milky
crepe jasmine
for buttercups and irises,
and others whose names are strange to
my
tongue.
I traded
the fireflies of summer nights
that drifted into my room
for
the gentle glow of
phytoplanktons on a black sea
This soil casts its shadow within me—
the fragrance of fog
trapped in redwood branches,
the gleaming algae in the saltwater,
the muted sun beyond the tropics,
the citrus-scent, and the winter rain.
My ancestors told me
stories of the old woman
who spins her thread in the moon
thread spanning oceans
I read traces of same stories
inscribed on shards of earth
behind California museum glass
left by people who
steamed corn in their husks,
fished in the Bay
heard the coyotes cry.
And yet,
A jaundiced moon with borrowed
light of the sun reminds me
that I have borrowed this land,
with an ever-changing expiry date,
Decided by men
whose scissors’ edges glint
with same light
ready to snip the thread.
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