You wrote my story before I could speak.
I was sketched with the clay of ancient myths –
Mother. Goddess. Witch. Whore.
You robed me and gave me my scripts.
I was the shadow where your luminescence preyed,
The night where you came to hide your darkness, each day.
I wrote my songs in the margins of your myths
My hands first held, then grasped and kept
The ripe sweet nectarines that I bred,
I bit into their red flesh in the twilight of days,
Your amber light waning, as you slept, fitfully.
Soumita Bhattacharya lives in Bangalore, India and carves out moments of creativity amid her daily roles as a teacher, caregiver, and mother. Her writing explores themes of identity, loss, and grief within the framework of social expectations and cultural conditioning, offering a distinctly feminine perspective.