Portrait of a Marriage without a Care for Borders

they’ve mapped this                              place for us
in a shape such like daises shudder to bloom
history is a red leaf in autumn
heading somewhereclose to death—
when my ancestors passed oceans they filled their lungs
with air & dipped pails in the ocean to draw        water

there was a story                       in which my grandparents
married each other in the middle of an ocean which is to
say there was no harness to land & ample sky they exchanged
garlands as easily as one would move between two continents
when nani uttered mitti from her mouth it reminded me of the
smell of petrichor & the sightings from a blurred glass window

as autumn made a headlong foray into that year’s October
& the world fused                       lavender orchids onto land
the world spilled                        into three oceans & tiptoed
into the eyes of two people on a ship as rituals on land unmade
before dusk birds arrived from the sky & people sat cross-legged
& spoke to the sea asall engulfed into caravans of sacred silence

By Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Biography:

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a GREAT scholarship awardee, and has earned a second postgraduate degree in literature from England. Her chapbook titled ‘Home is Hyperbole’ won the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Series (Boston Accent Lit). She is the author of Synecdoche (The Poetry Annals) and Prosopopoeia (Ghost City Press). She is the founding editor of Parentheses Journal. An old soul, she runs a patisserie.