Sundarbarn | Barsa Ray
POETRY
10/30/20261 min read
There was a time I slept naked and rivers flowed through me
leaving silt in my mouth before meeting the sea
salt licked my pores, kissed my tongue when it flicked,
my veins and arteries tributaries and distributaries.
The roots of mangroves bunched my flesh in their fists;
their tangle indistinguishable from our limbs,
from the cross currents forming their own cat's cradle.
Your body split into two banks,
framing the river bed where I slept.
I lay in you, my spine curved to match yours,
until I grew tired of the rain, of my hair in ribbons of kelp,
of your slow spreading waters, subsuming me.
I rose into a spout, an elephant's trunk, spinning
free my body into cloud water, up the wind shear to Himalaya.
My feet stretched to ice caps—burn strong as a sun
scorched my toes, my throat parched from receding glaciers,
sight dimmed on the cool spots of a lone snow leopard.
I did not heed the wolf howl of the north wind,
ears keened to the whispering bamboo I left behind,
my eyes flaming for the blazing stripes of tiger,
the memories reeled me in to the nest of your body heat.
Here I span now between flow tide and ebb tide
at the estuary, fine sediments accumulate slow,
a depression pushes back the sludge, forms new islands,
my limbs are the bridge planks mapping your breadth,
my breath the morning mist you stretch awake to.
Barsa’s poetry has been published by Magma, Peepal Tree Press, Covert Literary, Theleme (University of Lisbon), DEFRA funded Everyone's a Seed (Leeds Trinity University), Xavier Review, and Indian Literature among others. She’s been selected as New Northern Poet 2026 (Word Up North), and on the Literary Sisters programme (Bronte Parsonage/Writers’ Project of Ghana/ British Council). She was highly commended in the Smeaton 300 Poetry Competition, National Poetry Centre, Leeds, and has been listed on numerous competitions. Her short story publications include Wasafiri, Mslexia, Peepal Tree, Dahlia Press and Sans Press. Her story has been nominated for the BBC National Short Story Award 2026.