Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem Everything We Left Behind by Manasi Garg, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write about shedding the years”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday July 26th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

Everything We Left Behind by Manasi Garg

In my dreams, my grandmother and I are 
bodies of fat and light and we clasp our hands so 
tightly that even God knows to cry. I am in love
with her and her marbled flesh. We walk through her first home.
Cursed city. I watch her shed the years, watch them whisper into the clouds 
like linens drying under the hot sun. Here is her house that burned down. 
Here is the temple next to the fruit orchard. Here is where the 
neighbors threw rocks. She was only 11 when 
the world ended. Pakistan, 1947. She tells me the men would rather
drown their daughters than let them be taken. 
I picture a thousand Ophelias: the white dresses billowing,
the river water scything their breathless skin in rivulets, their heads
bobbing up and down Ravi River like a string of pearls. 
I wonder if they filled their pockets with stones or if they just accepted
the darkness, the finality of it all: if they wanted it, if it felt like a
mother’s womb, if they were aching to return home.