zamana

By Amrita Chakraborty

several hundred years ago, i knew a girl named zamana. where she lived, june marked the start of monsoon season. and she had her ways of preparing. every night, as her husband slept soundly, zamana would sit for hours in the small courtyard beyond their hut and weave baskets and thatches from thick, dried reeds she had gathered from the fields. they would cover the gaps in their walls and ceiling when the rains arrived to ravage and replenish the land, and the baskets would hold any water that leaked.

by moonlight, she would weave, tight coils and complicated braids, her dark face awash with silvered serenity. the movement of her hands, graceful and lush with understanding. i would look on from the corner of the yard, sitting with my back to the wall, my eyes never leaving her and hers never glancing up at me. she knew what i was. and she allowed my presence, some nights i hoped she took solace in it—but she did not know i loved her. even the humans that believed in our existence did not believe that we could love.

when the first streak of orange hit the sky, zamana would rise silently, stack her night’s work in a neat pile, and head to the river holding two of the baskets. i would follow. by weak sunlight, she would enter the river, and i would sink in behind her. watch as the wet lines of her white and red sari drifted around her, enclosing her body in a sunsoaked halo. one basket, she would fill with water to take home with her. the other she would offer to me. i accepted, every time, because this was the only time in all those hours spent when she would meet my eyes. that brief brush of her hand on mine before she pulled away. i have not known a more subtle tenderness to this day.

This story was previously published in The Olivetree Review, Spring 2018 Issue.

AMRITA CHAKRABORTY is a Bangladeshi-American writer from New York. Her work has been published by Winter Tangerine, Vagabond City, The Poetry Annals, and others. She has also self-published a chapbook entitled Incarnate and was a winner of the 2018 Golden Shovel Poetry Prize. You can find her on Twitter @amarinthas and on Instagram @duskenrose, and you can read more of her work at: medium.com/@amrita.chakraborty.