Three Poems by Sharanya Sharma
content warning: descriptions of violence nandi relays a message after an endless swallowing of years a little girl, limbs molded from mother’s darkest saffron stole to my soot-stoned side hewn from sweat and love. hungrily she cupped a hand to my frozen ear. the cold pelt singed in her exhale as with earth-stained lips she scratched words into being the way eyes were once carved into my face. she said lord give me a mouth that is too full of teeth to hold a prayer still in my blood. and skittered away before a guard could tell her not to touch me as if the whorls of her ancestors’ fingers were not imprinted in my skin. unblinking i gaze into a land of concrete and glass. even here, in a view of metal ants and water i cannot cross, i see your feet blue thighs poised melding into sea and sky toes jeweled in a blanket of white. they call it snow. the falling of silk slivers that disappear into hair and flesh. lord, tell me. will they know the …