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India Currents gave me a voice in days I was very lost. Having my articles selected for publishing was very validating – Shailaja Dixit, Executive Director, Narika, Fremont
Skin of Soil
Nature’s first vision is brown
her first awakening upon the nascent earth,
a blur of tawny and bronze
and walnut and wheat.
Nature’s first memory is soil
spilling from the ends
of her matted mane,
spilling into empty oceans,
filling a parched planet
who never even knew its
own thirst.
Nature’s first footsteps forge dusky craters,
her rage and her fire bubbling beneath,
threatening to turn even dewdrops dark,
to slay sunlight and stars both,
but,
Nature was patient,
sewing tree trunks
into the ground’s silent scars.
Where nature roams there is brown,
unblinking, unyielding and endless.
So how can i think to reject
the color of the skin
that clothes me, that shelters
all my thousand creatures
and flowers and roots,
how can i bear to soften
the pigment that endures
my lightning and tears
and inborn fury.
How can i dare to
hate the brown that is all
but the rippled
reflection of nature herself.
——
Kanchan Naik is a junior at The Quarry Lane School in Dublin, CA. Aside from being the assistant culture editor of India Currents, she is the editor-in-chief of her school’s news-zine The Roar. She is also the Teen Poet Laureate of Pleasanton, and uses her role to spread a love of poetry in her community.
Artwork by Feminist, Sravya Attaluri.