Pravy Jha

What the ocean doesn’t forgive

I once saw my father throw a fish back
after gutting it halfway. He said it was practice;
for what, I never asked.

Now, whenever I say love,
I imagine the fish gasping in both worlds.
When I say home,
I imagine the knife rinsed, clean.

The ocean has no memory,
only appetite. It swallows the names
of everything that leaves us.

When I walk by the docks,
the fishermen nod like saints,
their nets slick with prayer.

I don’t tell them that I still dream
of the fish’s open eye,
the one that looked at him,
then at me,
as if choosing whom to haunt.

Things my mother buries in the backyard

A toothbrush, because her teeth ache
from smiling at men in the market.
A receipt, because she wants to forget
how much forgetting costs.
A dead phone, because silence
is still a kind of noise.

She tells me the earth knows what to keep.
Once, she buried a mango seed
and forgot which side was up.

Now a tree leans into the neighbor’s yard,
its fruit hanging over their washing line.
The neighbor plucks one, wipes it on her sari,
and says nothing.

My mother says it’s good luck
to grow sweetness in someone else’s garden.
I say it’s theft.
She says, child, sometimes survival
is just another word for sharing.

Postcard from a country that no longer exists

Dear whoever keeps the maps now,
we are fine. The river still splits in two
where the temple used to be.
Children still race stray dogs through the ruins
and count their ribs like years.

Our anthem has no words,
just a hum we pass down
mouth to mouth like a seed.

Some nights, the power returns for an hour.
We switch on every light
just to watch the walls remember color.

Do not send help.
Just write back and tell us
if your sky still has birds,
and if they, too, forget
where to land.

Pravy Jha is a writer, student, and educator from India. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines including Lacuna Vox, Laundromat Literary, and Silly Goose Press, as well as in anthologies like Upon Learning That and Rooted In: Rite. She is heavily influenced by the works of Rumi and Khalil Gibran and loves the novels of Jane Eyre, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling. She believes in slow mornings, sea light, and stories that linger long after reading. A self-proclaimed movie lover who never gatekeeps her favorites, she can often be found walking her dog Mishti or baking cupcakes.

Artwork: “Teal” by Daniel Lurie

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