You can call me:           anuran,    moist  with semi-

permeable skin.  Peptides growing on me like bees.

I was once-tadpole:  water-breath, tailed,  morphing

from frogspawn to child straight into fresh streams.

Here, see my       hind-limbs  longer   than my fore,

my Triassic histories more ancient than ecosystems.

We were here before you. I am sister to salamander.

I am sister     to newt.    Caecilians are my brothers:

fossorial       cylindrical   serpent-bodied mysteries.

See my man       carrying     a diaphanous vocal-sac,

florescent,    burgeoning.   Hear his old croak-song:

long & pelvic.     See       a torrential amplexus after 

another.  See all of these     wet      ghats in the rain.   

Before the lust of your   colonization:    came mine.

—

Kunjana Parashar lives in Mumbai. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day, MORIA, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Columba, 45th Parallel, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @wolfwasp.