A myriad of branches spread
like veins in a body–
a screen door for the sky
thick and thin
strong and slim
lines, matrices of dark brown
stand independently in union
against the morning dew.

A myriad of branches spread
like veins in a body–
a screen door for the sky
thick and thin
strong and slim
lines, matrices of dark brown
stand independently in union
against the morning dew.
Sonia Chintha is an Indian American writer who lives in the Washington DC area. She blogs, writes poetry, and fiction. She is also an English teacher who believes that our experiences teach us more than any test. She is the founder and co-editor of Good Little Girls.




Silence and sunlight freedom’s delightful present for dreamers like me endless blue lights up the earth’s prickly surface–dark starlets of dew spark edges of green

I.
Minutes
into that first class –
two and a half full
decades since she’s done
anything like this –
she has to admit
there is a kind of poetry:
the manipulation of numbers,
a focused search
for the pattern
that will represent it
all.

The first time I saw the words “ms. chintha is a bitch” inked on to walls, I was 29 years old. I had been teaching for a mere four years, but felt so veteran already because I had stopped crying when fights happened in or near my classroom among students. Up until my fourth year, I blamed myself for not creating a safe enough space for my students and that’s why they began fighting.
I sit here free with my mind, the trees, and a mosquito. I am love. I am earth. I am peace. Still I wonder. I