Sandesh
Today’s paneer.
Cow’s milk
(warm)
(dried too).
Some handfuls
slivered almonds
pistachios
saffron
(stranded)
sugar
(powdered)
cardamom
rose
ghee.
Iron
a heavy bottom
pan cheese cloth lemon
juice or lime.
Ma’s wooden
moulds, smooth
in her hands.
Fish.
Flower.
Leaf.
Shell.
Use what’s left,
what I tucked into
light bags, dragging
dark water.
Empty immigrant cupboards
don’t know these smells.
Sandesh.
Your favorite.
Eat it.
It’s special.
Hip high North
Carolina sun sucks
shadows from brown
fingers. There’s a big
old backyard tree.
I’m crunching leaves.
My sisters are some
where upstairs, curled in
shell books, each other’s
hair. Thakurma’s in the
kitchen. I whine
I’m hungry. Watch careful
hands pour water-colored
rose into its tiny aluminum
cap.
Tissue
paper fingers
blot sweaty
child forehead.
Roll a fish
shaped sweet into
a greedy small mouth.
I turn back to the yard, smiling,
chase leaves in buttered light.
Ignore the sore
belly.
Sandesh.
Your favorite.
A treat after months
away. I feel the grit in
my teeth, remember the
bitter feeling when
we tried our hands
when Thakurma
passed, how our sandesh
was too sugared, dead.
Your favorite.
Before my insides started to turn.
Before we realized what we couldn’t digest.
What do we have left?
And yet
a love letter to our grandmother.
Copyright © Anjoli Roy
Anjoli Roy is a creative writer, editor, instructor, and PhD student in the English Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. While she mostly writes stories about her family, sometimes, with a loving community who pushes her, there are (attempts at) poems. You can find a few more of her recent publications online in, most recently, Frontier Psychiatrist, Kweli, LA Review of LA, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative (forthcoming), Slink Chunk Press, and Spiral Orb. Her website is www.anjoli.roy.com.
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Curator’s Notes: “Memory steeped in savory flavor, shaped by loving preparation, Anjoli Roy brings us to the table of familial love then delivers us from grieving with “Sandesh.”