Koi Maach by Shaoni Rakshit
- Mar 16, 2025
- 1 min read
whatever streaming shoal you find / the pond always dries up / there’s only so much of
summer left / in the banks / my grandfather saw a fish climb a tree / on his errand run /
some things are more mystical said out loud
i would pray to a god if it danced for me / i stood by the pier so piously / why won’t he
arrive / the koi ruminated in the water until they wore out / the artistry of a memory is in the
fact / it keeps flowing
the lip of the lake is parched with earth now / but i still see the water / under the dying two
thousand five sun / most of these things are not past tense yet / everybody in this story is
still alive.
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Shaoni Rakshit was born on an island country, spent fourteen years in an ex-archipelago, and currently lives in a port city. Her writing has been published in The Alipore Post, Ramona Magazine, sea foam mag, Visual Verse, as well as in a poetry anthology called ‘A Letter, A Poem, A Home’, available on Amazon. Find Shaoni on Instagram (@shaonirak) and on X (@shayisonx).
I read your koi the way one waits
at a pond that remembers rain.
Even when the banks are cracked,
something still moves beneath the skin of earth.
Your grandfather saw a fish climbing a tree
felt like a truth we’re taught not to say aloud
that wonder doesn’t need permission,
it just happens when no one is looking.
I stood with you at the pier,
asking a god to arrive on time,
learning instead that memory is the deity
it never stops flowing, even when it leaves.
The lake may be parched now,
but your lines keep water where language usually fails.
And yes, everyone here is still alive—
because you named them before they could disappear.
You wrote…