by Sayantani Roy
It’s the threshold of night and dawn and I am packed to leave. A nightjar calls out stirring the dark of the courtyard. The dark an inaudible jal-tarang. It rises from the heart of the well, now dry but for the pull of ancestors. Its pulley rope I can’t cut loose. The courtyard a stage for ceremonies. My parents under a canopy the night of their wedding. My brother’s first morsel of rice. My grandmother’s mortal remains on this ground as she makes her way into another realm. It’s early spring. Strains of a pre-dawn raag stretch the dark toward light. I can’t make out the notes, but it’s the hour of homecoming. Look, I have only arrived. The crows are yet to stir, and I am waiting for our old rickshaw puller who’ll ferry us to the station. The forever waiting, what am I to make of it?
Sayantani Roy grew up in small-town India and writes from the Seattle area. She has placed work in Alan Squire Publishing, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Book of Matches, Contemporary Haibun Online, Ekphrastic Review, Full House Literary, Gone Lawn, Heavy Feather Review, Panoplyzine,TIMBER, Wordgathering, and elsewhere. This season, she is participating as a mentee in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship program. She is a Community TA for ModPo.org (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry) on Coursera. Say hello on Instagram @sayan_tani_r.
Emerge Literary Journal 