By Sneha Subramanian Kanta
for Appa
Though I believe hunger, I believe more in fulfillment.
The sacred knot of a full stomach. Fistfuls of blue-
berries picked from a mountain, its silent spectacle.
The whole world being remade and going unnoticed.
A whole world can be contained inside a watermelon.
You bring me cut fruit from the kitchen and I know
this ritual by memory. First, sounds of your footsteps,
then cold water running over the still fruit. The precise
movement of your hands with the knife. The enunciation
of fruit against its sharp edge. Every piece falling
in different variables of sound, like plucking tea leaves,
or a rustling as when you walk through sugarcane fields.
On most days, I predict the fruit like a weathercaster will
forecast elements, which is to say there are permutations
in this exercise. In the year when I was away from home, in
a new country, I saw fruits hanging from most trees—
all autumn the redapples falling on a slope near the train station,
and everyone walking past its busyness. If you were
here, you would study the branches and tell me about the trees.
Then, when we would reach home, and I finish preparing
lunch, you would begin to wash the fruit to be eaten after
the meal. Then, fold your palms in praise to God, and sleep
under the wide incarnation of a sky in the yard. The redapples
falling still. The redapples falling still.
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