by Cia Mangat
after Kaveh Akbar
swishing water from the bottle
between my lips I witnessed
feet like pale fish overlapping
in the rinse over hot rock ma says
when i was born she brought me
here for the first time and it was just
a single room hardly a thrumming gurdwara
filled with cool light where all of our
slippers are kept so carefully by men
with beards soft as incense smoke
on the throat as we turn and press
our foreheads to white marble &
sit in our mothers’ laps watch the
foam of goat hair swat flies away
whilst lines of uncles and aunties swarm
in queues to kiss foreheads to
floor like pages of holy books falling
into place i never understood how
our gurdwara at home pulsed the same
tinny hymns through speakers
but with a ceiling of an office
what if i
lied & said that the damp was oceans
pressing leaks into these corners making them
sag with the weight of something sacred?
CIA MANGAT studies English at Wadham. Recently, she buzzed her hair off to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a sentient kiwi.
Art by Izzy Fergusson