by Sabyasachi Roy

The monsoon murmurs in your accent—
a Kolkata lilting drip, syllables that hang
like unfinished confessions. Your mother called
it “old gods singing,” but she exists now
only as a photograph enclosed in faux-wood.

Memory is a ruptured drain, refusing
to stay buried. It leaks in strange ways:
wet-fish ache, the ghost of Rabindra Sangeet
crackling through vinyl, the pluck of nets
against walls that have waited too long.

You walk—barefoot—into puddles that flower
like wounds on the city’s raw skin. Each step
claims a metaphor you didn’t ask for; each ripple
asks a question your throat can’t form.

The walls here don’t flake—they speak.
They confess lovers paper-burnt for warmth.
Meanwhile, you wait—for “…” on your screen—
letters that never arrive.

Irony is that raincoat you left behind.
It’s laughter echoing in a café that doesn’t know your name.
It’s the chai uncle calling “beta,”
even when you outgrow the title every year.

A monsoon makes us poets—or liars.
The city drowns in pasts we thought buried.
Still—here we stand—wading
through water we didn’t choose,
water that won’t let us go.

Sabyasachi Roy is the author of Writing While the World Burns (Authors Publish). His work appears in Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Singapore Unbound, and Viridine Literary. He writes craft essays for Authors Publish. More of his work can be found at: Matador, Substack (craft essays), and Eyeem (photography).