Mulberries
"some burst like memories now — smiles we never knew were temporary."
Vellore Institute of Technology · India
Twenty-four voices. Seven countries. Languages that cross every border we thought we'd drawn. This is what it sounds like when the world writes honestly.
When we launched Aporia in May 2026, we made a single promise: to read everything that arrived with genuine attention, and to say yes whenever something told the truth. We didn't expect the volume. We didn't expect the range. We didn't expect Uzbekistan.
Issue Two is what happened when we kept that promise for a full month. Twenty-four writers from seven countries — India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, the United States, and beyond — submitting poems, essays, fiction, and criticism in English, Hindi, Urdu, and the shayari tradition. Some of them had never submitted anywhere before. Some had been declined by us once and came back with something better. All of them, in their own way, wrote something they couldn't not write.
The issue opens with Shaunak Pathak's "Mulberries" — a poem that holds two timelines and two geographies simultaneously without announcing either, and ends in five words that contain the whole thing. It moves through Sriyukta's triptych "Flesh over Flesh," three poems that form an arc from consumption to grief to longing. Through Avni Devlal's "Red," which holds a reader inside denial until the very last moment. Through Aahana Singh's "Midnight Revelations," which says the thing about growing up that most of us never quite found the words for.
There is also criticism here, for the first time. "The Grammar of Grief" is a close reading of Ghalib and Jaun Elia — two Urdu poets separated by a century and a partition, speaking to each other across the line. It is the kind of essay that makes you want to read everything it mentions.
What connects these pieces is not subject matter or geography. It is the quality of attention each writer brought to their own experience — the willingness to stay with something difficult long enough to find its shape. That is still the only thing we look for at Aporia. We hope this issue shows it can be found anywhere.
"some burst like memories now — smiles we never knew were temporary."
"the craving for finality / mistaken for / flesh."
"I see red now — the colour of truth I tried to hide."
"So maybe all it deserves is an essay I'm too afraid to let anyone read."
"All I ask for is for someone to look closely enough, and to be able to see me without the need for an explanation."
"A grammar of grief, passed across more than a century, by a tradition that found ways to remember itself through a partition."
"a door with a lock / yet lost its key / a key only restored by its دیدار"
The complete issue — all twenty-four pieces — formatted for reading offline.
"some burst like memories now — smiles we never knew were temporary."
"the craving for finality / mistaken for / flesh."
"I see red now — the colour of truth I tried to hide."
"So maybe all it deserves is an essay I'm too afraid to let anyone read."
"All I ask for is for someone to look closely enough, and to be able to see me without the need for an explanation."
"A grammar of grief, passed across more than a century, by a tradition that found ways to remember itself through a partition."
"a door with a lock yet lost its key — a key only restored by its دیدار"
"The farther I drifted away from you, the more your memories became entwined with mine."
"Maybe the winner and the so-called lost / Both light the same cigarette at the same cost."
"You write with my whites, your chapters / What if nature collapses minutes within?"
"Sometimes, one sincere sentence spoken with love and belief is enough to rebuild a broken heart."
"Perhaps we cannot be too certain about uncertainty either, because if we are, would curiosity not be killed all over again?"
"They were never only about the story. They were about the version of you who was reading them."
"Sometimes the place doesn't matter. Sometimes it's just about who you're with."
"After waiting a whole year, the golden day rises — and within it, how those ten days pass, one cannot tell."
"He gave me a vibrant smile, / Silence burning through a thousand miles."
"you remain. / if not a being, a program. / feeding on our lives, our resources, / our affection."
"But I'm still hoping / That someday I'll stop nodding, / And talk, my part of the story."
"She was the moon, with no tide to pull. / Her chest echoed like an abandoned hall."
"So don't just tell me — 'Don't make me feel special' / Tell me — How not to?"
"Here I am, the intangible human, / Whom you love to hate the most."
"The walls whispered goodbye, / I hugged the pillars and cried."
"Are you real, or merely an illusion I created? / That is the only question I carry."
"The falling drops kissing the warm, waiting earth. / Time slows; the world breathes."