London, 2016

By Sneha Subramanian Kanta

My first memory of London is rain—
from inside Heathrow 

cold air coming in every time
someone enters the terminal
doors opening like page flaps

this morning, among the glow
of electric lights and the cartography
of distance, I think about the birds not
here as much as birds outside on gray 

concrete, as gray as fraying edging of leaves
speckled like diamonds. Everything is water
widening into the map. I never carry maps

opening into the chest of a new city
but walk until I remember the path
of trees. London dissolves inside me 

like the smell of rain foliage,
a language marbling the body—
suspension, then grounding.

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SNEHA SUBRAMANIAN KANTA is the author of the chapbooks Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020), Ancestral-Wing (Porkbelly Press, 2024), and Every Elegy Is A Love Poem (Variant Lit, forthcoming).

This poem originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 21. 

Photo by Inge Maria