Nonfiction from Preeth Ganapathy

Photo: Jane Kim

Mornings

Silence is a thick blanket over the morning air. The damp mud shoots wisps of warmth up into the sky, its strength not enough to achieve the purpose of its intention. Grey works its way into the minutes, into the words and into sleep. Rain whispers in drops, to the concrete trimmings lining the edges of the square house. The amplitude of its conversation is nimble. It travels up to your chest, its lightness settling in the blank space in your ear canal. You try to preserve it, to guard it there for as long as you can, as if it were the song of a momentary sun. Later, you know, the sound of civilization will try to rob you of it. You sharpen the saw of your breath in the softness of morning’s solitude so you are ready to swim the waters of day’s foaming sea. Obsidian watches you like a feral cat from underneath the cloak of wait, waiting for the heart of night to descend.
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Preeth Ganapathy is from Bengaluru, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of avenues such as Origami Poems Project, The Buddhist Poetry Review, Better Than Starbucks and Young Raven’s Literary Review. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris’s July 2020 Poetry Challenge.