“Somewhere” and “Communion”

By Oindri Sengupta 

Sukanya Misra - Bijayanagara Ruins (2023), Photograph
Image description: The photograph depicts a vast landscape under a blue sky. In the immediate foreground, tree branches reach down from the upper right side of the image. The landscape features rows of stone columns and a low stone wall. Two adults and a child walk along them. On the far left, columns hold up a horizontal stone beam, which is partly visible. In the right background, huge boulders form a towering structure.

Somewhere 

Somewhere the rain would fall;

and do so without leaving any trace on the sky.

Scattering the scent of all the streets 

waiting on the edge of the city for us,

to have one last drag of winter. 

There's nothing in my hand that doesn't smell

of your floating words and 

nothing that the river doesn't bring,

passing through the channels of my ribs

to sound like your name.

But everything else that acquires 

the sun in all its shapes,

stands like moss

around the ruins of a temple.

And everything else that hasn't left for the wind

segregates the hours from our time,

leaving with us a few orange dusks

and a few drops of our breaths inside us.

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Sukanya Misra - The Dawn (2023), Photograph
Image description: The photograph features a rocky path in between lush, green bushes. In the background, a figure stands alone near the end of the path, where there seems to be a large rocky structure. In the far background, silhouettes of tall, tropical trees and mountains are visible. The sun hangs low in a light-yellow sky.

Communion

The day left us without leaving,

as water leaves the coast 

to capture the setting sun.

This whole diagram of my body,

lying over an April noon

is an ashen embroidery of all the belongings

you carry for the next station.

The colour of sea is in your eyes.

And I scrape the night of a full moon from there 

to smoothen the whole landscape of your room.

You miss places and faces that travel with you,

like a passenger losing his ticket to home.

You stir the stars in my sleep

and I keep opening doors.

I keep opening them all

till they become a vast gorge of rivers

where the wind passes without leaving

any sediments of the last traces of you or me.

Sukanya Misra - Twilight (2023), Photograph
Image description: The photograph depicts a vast body of water during twilight. The sun, which is bright-orange and hangs low in the sky, shines on the water surface, producing an orange glow. In the foreground, tree branches border the edges of the image. The sun is captured just between two branches in the middle of the image.

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Oindri Sengupta from Kolkata, India teaches English to Higher Secondary students at a Government School in Kolkata. Her poetry has appeared in The Lake, Poetica Review, Tint Journal, Amethyst Review, Outlook India, International Women's Writing Guild, Abridged, Plato'sCaves Online, Dreich Magazine, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and Suspect.

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Sukanya Misra is an amateur photographer. It was that travel that inspired her to get into photography almost a decade ago. Mostly self-taught, she began with travel photography and then eventually began nature photography. She is a natural light photographer with a unique artistic style and loves to capture candid moments. She is a high school teacher by profession and lives in Kolkata, India. As a photographer she wants her photos to imagine a bold and exciting world, in which the subject, be it a product or person  stands out and shines.

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