The Gods are Only Human: Four Poems by Sreeja Naskar
Photo: Karan Madhok
Poetry: ‘i am learning how to measure loss in rings. / each year, the body thickens. / each year, the body splits. / no one asks why the tree bends — / they only marvel at the curve.’
the gods are only human
the sky doesn’t open anymore. no burning bushes,
no stone tablets. just the blue glow of my phone,
17 missed calls from my mother.
she says i never listen. she’s not wrong.
(what is a god if not the first voice you disobey?)
the man on the news says the water is rising.
the city floods like an open mouth & they call it
an act of god.
(what is a god if not the thing we blame
when the ground comes loose?)
my mother says i should pray more. she leaves voicemails
that sound like hymns. call me back, she chants,
call me back. i pocket her voice & forget.
the only altar i kneel at is my kitchen sink,
hands scrubbing a plate that never comes clean.
the cracks in the ceramic remind me of her hands,
veins raised like fault lines.
(god is the body we inherit)
i tell myself stories. how the gods used to be here.
how they lived like we do—
burnt their tongues on coffee, lost their keys.
how maybe they wept into steering wheels
or cursed at cracked phone screens.
how maybe they, too, left the stove on.
my grandmother lights incense & says to bow.
i fold my body into shapes i don’t understand.
i press my forehead to the floor & do not ask why.
outside, the world burns. i do not ask why.
(i have never heard a word from any god that was not human-made.)
the news keeps playing. another act of god.
another city, another surge, another ache.
the camera pans to a woman wading waist-deep,
clutching a child. she looks up,
but the sky is empty.
the gods aren’t watching.
the gods are here, beneath the water.
their hands in the mud. their lungs full of salt.
& maybe, tonight, when i dream,
i’ll see them—
drenched & trembling,
knocking at my door.
*
arboreal inheritance
in the village where my grandmother’s bones
still turn the soil, trees speak in tongues.
banyan limbs spill like rivers, roots tangled with time.
we call it inheritance. we call it staying.
(but is a root not a fist?
is inheritance not the first wound we carry?)
my mother says we have the bark in our blood.
she says the mango tree still leans toward the house,
remembering who left.
i am learning how to measure loss in rings.
each year, the body thickens.
each year, the body splits.
no one asks why the tree bends —
they only marvel at the curve.
(how many names did we lose before learning
to answer to the wrong one?)
the news says the forest is dying.
a thousand fires & not one god bothered to blink.
smoke coils through the veins of forgotten soil.
i hear the crackle & think of my grandmother’s hands.
she taught me how to split a mango
without spilling the seed. told me that inside every pit
is the shadow of a forest. that some fruits
will rot before they fall.
(the first thing i learned from the trees was how to hunger.)
i see them now, lining the roads like mourners.
eucalyptus bending where the wind breaks.
jacarandas bruising the air with purple grief.
and in the gaps, the ghosts of those we cut down—
their bodies still trembling beneath our feet.
(my father says the roots don’t die. i think they only remember differently.)
so when i stand beneath a bodhi tree,
leaves trembling like hands,
i swear i can hear the soil whisper my name.
(what is belonging if not the ache of too many roots?)
*
white salt and other names for salt
(the bird does not understand the cage,)
only the sky it cannot reach.
i press my tongue to the roof of my mouth
and it perches there, restless. the words come sharp,
all bone and flutter. i try to say one thing but another escapes —
how a sentence can break its own wings.
(once, i watched a crow drop a walnut on the asphalt
again and again, cracking it open like a prayer
that needed to be forced apart. maybe language)
is like that.
at the dinner table, i forget the word for salt.
call it white dirt. the taste of remembering.
my father laughs, but it’s the kind that doesn’t bloom.
(sometimes i mistake my mouth for an apology
and speak in half-built bridges.)
my mother once named a sparrow in our yard —
said it reminded her of home. i didn’t ask which home
because i knew she would say both.
(how many times can a word be given flight
before it forgets where it came from?)
in another language, i am an open window.
in this one, i am the crack in the glass.
i say “freedom” and it catches in my throat.
i say “belonging” and it leaves a bruise.
(the bird does not understand the sky either,
only the wind beneath it. the ache of ascent.)
in my dreams, i speak perfectly. no feathers clogging my throat.
no shadows of old tongues fluttering in my chest.
the bird returns.
it circles my ribs, taps at my sternum.
but morning comes, and the words are still clipped.
my tongue folds into paper wings. still
i tell my mother the sparrow is gone.
(she nods. says it will find its way back.)
*
a history of nosebleeds
it comes mid-sentence, somewhere between (sorry) and (i didn’t mean to)
blood blooms sharp as memory, thick as inheritance.
i grab a tissue. tilt my head.
my mother taught me this: never back, never swallow
what wants to leave.
(some people were taught to bleed politely)
the first time it happened,
i was twelve, the principal said “wrong shoes”
and my nose cracked open. a warning shot.
it happened again when my father’s name
hit the concrete of a job application and sank.
the blood stains my teeth. a mouthful of metal.
“just a little blood,” my mother whispers. “just clean it up.”
she doesn’t ask why the body breaks at the sound of no.
we don’t ask those kinds of questions.
i’ve bled in bathrooms, in boardrooms.
bled through denial letters and price tags.
at the embassy, i left a red fingerprint on my own passport —
they handed it back like it was still clean.
in the waiting room, a woman crossed herself.
(god bless you) she said.
as if faith could stopper the leak.
my mother never told me it would be like this.
how a body will split itself in the name of love.
how milk turns sour when no one drinks it.
how the sink stains pink, and you call it nothing.
(some days i walk through the world
knowing i am only one thin membrane away
from spilling myself whole.)
i touch my nose. the tissue blooms dark.
the bleeding always stops. but the body remembers.
the body always remembers.
***
Sreeja Naskar is a high school poet based in West Bengal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poems India, Gone Lawn, ONE ART, Crowstep Journal, Soul Poetry, and elsewhere. She believes in the quiet power of language to unearth what lingers beneath silence.
