Salt stubbornly clung to the air, even through the flames.
Its pungency folded into smoke,
filling frayed edges of my memory.
Amongst brackish clouds of rubble
whipping around me, a metal tang
lurked, ambushing my tongue. Sweat
climbed my back warily, as if
even it feared the ominous column of heat.
The farm house Grandpop gave me
on that quiet afternoon so many years ago
stood blackened, its beams
etched bleakly against the sky.
We couldn’t look away.
In the barn, the pigs shrieked. Their cries
threaded through the muddy smoke, through rafters
snapping like ribs. I couldn’t save anything.
This dug into my chest, like a tractor gone loose
to till the earth endlessly. It stung the same way
Grandpop’s voice stung when I was thirteen
& learning to rope sheep. Not quite,
Eleanor, almost. Try it again.
But the lariat wouldn’t heed me.
The rope slipped from my tender fingers
as dusk swallowed us whole,
until the light of the next morning,
calling me back to the corral.
Now, fire thunders through the fields
he once tilled. I sink to the ground,
pull my knees to my chest, try to cradle
the weight of smoke against my eyelids
until the body folds into the night’s ashen
mouth. Then, silence,
lithely snaking into slumber.
Only to awaken to the sound
of tilling.
Rohan Mahapatra is a California–based high school freshman who writes between stretches of coastal fog and balmy sunlight. His poetry often drifts back in time, toward the rural communities to which he traces his lineage, exploring pastoral landscapes, personal histories, and the quiet labor of earlier generations. A poetry editor for Eucalyptus Lit, he also engages in expository and journalistic writing at school, though the heart of his work is in verse. When he steps away from the page, he enjoys coding and traveling, always attuned to the places, stories, and people that shape his work.
Dr. Parton's Literacy In Place 