Gold In The Rain, Soil In My Blood
Hillsborough, NJ
2025, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Before I learned to speak,
I understood the monsoon.
It came like a mother’s voice —
low, strong, wrapped in wind,
carving lullabies into the leaves.
And I, small and barefoot,
would lift my face to the sky
as if rain could remember
what I had not yet learned.
Back home in Andhra,
the earth smells like turmeric after rain.
My ancestors walked among tamarind trees,
sang to rivers,
spoke to the sun without fear.
They knew when the soil was tired
and when the air was restless.
No one wrote this down.
It was not language.
It was knowing.
And somehow, I still know it.
Even in faraway places,
I carry the mango’s golden hush,
the rhythm of rice fields whispering at dusk.
I hear the roots call out
in a voice too wide for alphabets,
and too gentle to forget.
They do not speak in Telugu.
They speak in touch —
in wind curling through my hair,
in the sting of neem leaves,
in the red dust rising at my heels.
I am made of this.
Not just blood,
but bark.
Not just breath,
but earth.
So when I kneel in silence,
palms open to soil,
I do not feel small.
I feel remembered.
The roots curl gently toward me,
not to teach—
but to welcome.
You are here, they say.
We knew you’d return.
Reflection
This poem came from a place I can’t fully explain—but I felt it before I ever wrote it. “Gold in the Rain, Soil in My Blood” is my attempt to put into words something that’s always been inside me: the quiet, deep connection to a home I’ve never fully lived in, but somehow still carry with me. I wanted to write about inheritance—not through DNA or history books, but through the senses. Through soil, rain, wind, and memory. I grew up far away from Andhra, but pieces of it live in the stories I’ve heard, in the foods I eat, and in the strange way my body reacts to rain like it’s something holy. I wrote this poem in silence, almost like listening more than writing. It’s about ancestral knowledge, about the feeling that the land knows you—even when the world forgets. Sometimes you write something that finally says the thing you’ve been feeling your whole life. This piece is me reconnecting with something sacred, something soft and strong at once. It’s a reminder that I’m not alone. I am remembered.