He asked for my introduction.
I wrote it in a hundred words.
He didn’t like it.
He altered my bio.
I refused to accept.
He took me down.
That’s how our history was written.
Once exited from the mother’s womb,
is it possible to return to it?
Once departed from the homeland,
is it possible to go back again?
Everyone remained silent,
coping with the answers,
America held my hand.
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is a Pushcart Prize nominated, award-winning poet, writer, and translator. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Life and Legends and Translation Editor of IHRAF Literary in New York. Her works have appeared in notable journals like World Literature Today, Columbia Journal, California Quarterly, Indian Literature, Silk Routes Project (IWP, The University of Iowa), Life in Quarantine (Stanford University), etc. She has authored four poetry collections, and her works have been translated into fourteen languages. Poems from her award-winning book Bare Soul and her poetry film River of Songs have been included in the “Nova Collection” and the “Polaris Collection” Lunar Codex time capsules to go on the moon with NASA’s “Nova-C lander missions to Oceanus Procellarum” in 2022 and “NASA VIPER rover mission to the Lunar South Pole” in 2023. A UN Advocacy Member of the UNA-USA and a former lecturer of Political Science, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis holds a degree in Film Directing from the New York Film Academy and works as an independent filmmaker in Hollywood. Website: www.kalpnasinghchitnis.com