Suchita Parikh-Mundul(India) is a writer and copy editor whose articles have appeared in Femina, The Swaddle, and other magazines. Her poetry can be read in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Kritya, Gulmohur Quarterly, Narrow Road, Outlook India, Yugen Quest Review, Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, and other journals. Her work has also been included in anthologies such as Amity: peace poems, The Well-Earned (both Hawakal, 2022), On Hunger: A Poetrygram Anthology (ed. Helen Cox, 2023), other international compilations, and The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022-2023 (forthcoming, Hawakal). She lives in Mumbai, India.

 

English

 

 

THE BODY REMEMBERS

 

 

 

There are so many ways

in which the body speaks:

lowered tone, forgotten

lilt, quicker gait,

observant eyes –

each a fraction

of the person you rebuilt,

the one who moved away.

 

But the body remembers. Bones

know when you return, and old formulae

start to resolve in familiar ways.

 

When you’re home, the body

reminds you who you are,

who you always were –

yourself, once again.

 

 

 

A KIND OF MIGRATION

 

 

To be moved enough

to change

what you once were,

as if walking through

a cemetery, the past

laid to rest, the earth

flowering

with beginnings –

must be a kind

of migration too.