Agony Can Be a Gardener Too

By Sreyash Sarkar

I'm perched on a branch

 of my heart,

 like a question.

 Letters summon me—

 Why now, this flux of families

 And a city of the sun

 Beneath?

I propped myself

 With tons of boxes—

 Fragrances labelled

 ‘Open at your peril’.

 But I thought tuberoses

 Only bloomed at night.

Why now, this unreflected

 Intoxicating agony

 Brushing up against me,

 Flirting like a rewoven love?

 I promise her

 Anonymous, permanent humility,

 Tending to my plants—

 Because joy’s a quiet drift,

 and agony can be a gardener too.

A reshaper of worlds

 obsessed with

 leaving raw outlines.

 Each cut clinical,

 each removal,

a preparation

 for the next bloom.

A tug-of-war with memory,

 the pull, the snap—

 the unmaking of yesterday.

 From above, I see my gardens.

 The herons rest, shifting their forms

 at dusk and dawn.

A friend in the garden

 speaks of love, soft and secret,

 a quiet disappearance

 into shadows.

 But we agree, glasses in hand—

 That something has to grow.

Each thread weaving a pattern

 that both binds and sets you free.

 Otherwise, you are just

 abandoned history.

You have to look

 at the earth, if it’s

 soft, ingurgitating

 Your roots, the hunger

 in them and let

 The sprouts tell you

 enough is enough.

She buries silences,

 small and broken,

 into the soil's hidden dreams.

 A quiet writhing

 I can't see but know—

 microbial alchemy,

 the slow churn of becoming.

And the crickets begin their song,

 a song for those who labor,

 a song for those who wait.

A job well done, I tell her.

 You see, the gardener dwells,

 In the in-between.

Planting, pruning, dreaming,

 knowing it all comes back

 to the hush between roots,

 the ache of what blooms

 and fades.

She goes back into her box

 with her blooms of riddles.

 It’s not dark yet.

 Twilight unfurls.

 The garden reshapes.

 Shadows lean,

 growing toward

 the earth’s muted draw.

I close the lid.

 Now it is—

 Safe for me

 To come down.

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Sreyash Sarkar is a Pushcart Prize–nominated multidisciplinary artist and applied physicist from Calcutta who lives between Paris and Prague. His poetry, music, and visual art have appeared in literary journals and international exhibitions, exploring questions of identity, justice, displacement, and human resilience. His current projects include collaborative musical works with refugees and exhibitions that examine the intertwined realities of hatred, memory, and survival.