Unlearning
written by: Anjana Vipin
For once,
I let the syllables drip
from my fingertips
like rice flour batter,
settling
into a kolam,
perhaps the same half-remembered pattern
grandmothers drew
with quivering hands,
or nieces who didn’t bother
to wash away
the stray drops,
or gray-haired aunts
who could never make
all five petals curve alike—
words that knew
the smell of sweat I wiped
with the back of my hand
from my forehead,
and the illegible cursives
made by my damp hair
on a cotton blouse,
words coaxed from thresholds
like batter drops caught
on the top rim
of the steel pan,
a poem in rice flour carried
into a roadside gutter
by summer rain.
Anjana Vipin Edakkunny is a writer from Kerala, India currently based in the United States. Her work often engages with myth, memory, and contemporary experience, tracing how they bleed into one another. Her poems have appeared in Target Global Magazine, Poetry Potion, Borderless Journal, PoemsIndia, and is forthcoming in Inverse Journal. Her debut poetry manuscript, The Sandalwood Pyre, has been accepted for publication by Writers Workshop, Kolkata.
Latest posts by Anjana Vipin (see all)
- Unlearning - August 11, 2026
- Mornings Dipped in Rice Flour Batter - May 26, 2026
