wildscape. literary journal

After the Monsoon
by T. Repalle

There: your grandmother's hands unwrapping foil from the handi, and the kitchen erupts—ghee-smoke blooming thick as monsoon clouds, cardamom pods

split open in boiling milk, their seeds dark as monsoon earth. Biryani steaming in clay, raita weeping cucumber water, achaar

glistening red as laterite mud after the first rain. Your mother's been in the dough since dawn, her palms slick with oil and flour, kneading

until it yields. Until it becomes what she needs it to be. And now the paratha sits on your plate, still exhaling heat, ghee

pooling in the torn places where her fingers pressed through. If only, you think. Stomach crackled like a drought-bed earth

waiting for the deluge, or refusing it—you can't tell anymore. God, to be handi—holding heat without feeling, without this mud-thick

need clotting in your throat. The table is full of open mouths. Your cousin splits a gulab jamun with her teeth, rose-syrup bleeding

where she bit, and she's laughing, sugar dark on her tongue. She swallows. Her throat works like a river knowing exactly where to carry everything,

and you watch the way her jaw moves, mechanical, easy, like she was born knowing how to drown and surface. How to open herself to this

and not disappear. The biryani on your plate is a mound. Saffron threads dyeing the rice the color of floodwater, each grain swollen, fat

with its drowning. Bay leaves floating like debris. Your aunt's hand reaches across—ladle dripping—and adds more. Thoda aur (a little more), she says,

piling it higher, the rice wet and glistening, and your plate is a flood plain now, is a delta where everything collects and nothing drains. Better

a storm drain: open but taking nothing in, just the sound of water passing through. Let your ribs rise like levees,

spine dry as river stone. But you are the field that cracks for want of rain and drowns at the first drop. You have always been

both. Outside, the sky splits. You hear it before you see it—rain stippling the courtyard stones, darkening the concrete to its true color. Your grandmother

says the word: varsha. Relief threading through her voice like this is what saves, like the breaking of the sky is a mercy and not another drowning. But you know

there are two kinds of ruin. The paratha on your plate is still weeping, ghee seeping from its layers. Your mother tore it with her hands,

made it smaller, manageable, a portion she thinks you can bear. But even this— even the smell is a fist in your throat. Even the sight

of it sweating oil makes your stomach contract, tidal. A month of rain trying to move through six inches of pipe. You press your palms

into your lap. Your salwar kameez clings like wet cotton, though you haven't moved, haven't touched the water glass sweating beside your plate,

its own small weather system. You are so thirsty your tongue is a stone. You are so full you could flood. If only you were the petrichor—

the smell without the substance, the ghost of rain without the rain. If only you were the river that never questions where it's going. And god, if only

your mouth remembered how to open without keeping count. Your hands shake. Small monsoon winds. The table stretches:

raita pale as a drowned sky, dal simmering yellow as silt-thick floodwater, your cousin lunging for seconds, thirds, her plate a roiling abundance,

and the sound of her chewing fills the room like rain on a tin roof. Unyielding. Your aunt is talking, her mouth full of biryani, and someone

passes the achaar, oil-slick and sharp enough to make your eyes water, and your mother is watching you. Not obviously. Just that glance,

the one that weighs. That measures. The rice on your plate has gone cold. Grease congealing at the edges. And you think: next year,

when the monsoon comes, I will know how to open my mouth to it. I will learn the way a field learns water, the way a river learns its banks.

But the rain is here. The rain is now. Three times, your grandmother's hand crosses the table. Her spoon scrapes your plate—careful, quiet—

and she lifts the gulab jamun still drowning in its syrup. The top layer of rice, wet and heavy. The paratha folded like a ruined map. She returns them

to the serving dishes. Says nothing. Just catches your eye, brief as lightning, and you understand: this is what mercy looks like. Not the flood. Not the drought.

Just someone who sees you is still deciding if you can survive this. The meal continues. Plates passing, voices rising, the rain outside

heavier now, the way it always does once it starts. Your plate lighter, but still impossible. Your throat still a shut valve. And the water—

inside, outside, everywhere—has nowhere to go.

about the author // T. Repalle

T. Repalle (he/him) is a high school senior and writer from Austin, TX. He is passionate about various things including science, climate change, and health disparities. He recently got into poetry last year, and believes in how much power it has to change how people think.

Instagram: @trishithr