Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Redapples falling still” by Sneha Subramanian Kanta.

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Redapples falling still

By Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Though I believe hunger, I believe more in fulfillment.

The sacred knot of a full stomach. Fistfuls of blue-

berries picked from a mountain, its silent spectacle.

The whole world being remade and going unnoticed.

A whole world can be contained inside a watermelon.

You bring me cut fruit from the kitchen and I know

this ritual by memory. First, sounds of your footsteps,

then cold water running over the still fruit. The precise

movement of your hands with the knife. The enunciation

of fruit against its sharp edge. Every piece falling

in different variables of sound, like plucking tea leaves,

or a rustling as when you walk through sugarcane fields.

On most days, I predict the fruit like a weathercaster will

forecast elements, which is to say there are permutations

in this exercise. In the year when I was away from home, in

a new country, I saw fruits hanging from most trees—

all autumn the redapples falling on a slope near the train station,

and everyone walking past its busyness. If you were

here, you would study the branches and tell me about the trees.

Then, when we would reach home, and I finish preparing

lunch, you would begin to wash the fruit to be eaten after

the meal. Then, fold your palms in praise to God, and sleep

under the wide incarnation of a sky in the yard. The redapples

falling still. The redapples falling still.

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Copyright © Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Previously published in Redapples falling still (Harbor Editions, 2026).

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is the author of six chapbooks, including Redapples falling still and Every Elegy Is a Love Poem. She is the sixth Poet Laureate of the City of Mississauga (2026 – 2028). She was the 2025 Woodhaven Artist in Residence at The University of British Columbia Okanagan. She is one of the founding editors of Parentheses Journal, leading the Parentheses Journal Mentorship Program for emerging writers in Mississauga. She was born in Mumbai, India.

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