Reading Between the Lines
Neha M. Sampat
Reading Between the Lines
Every migration story starts
with desire and dis-ease.
Every person who moves is moving
to somewhere in the same
moment they are moving
away from somewhere else.
Immigrant and Emigrant: They build a whole life
and lineage in the liminal spaces—
a doorway, a waiting room, an airplane suspended
over an ocean.
Their own ground was ripped out from under them,
a trick that travels
across seas, it seems.
A curse that courses through the bloodlines
of our brown bodies.
I ask my parents why they left, but they share
only why they came.
They press a thick volume to
my chest and stack their palms against
my lips—inviting a kiss or muting a wish,
I do not know.
I am allergic to their out-breath, and my airway starts to close.
Everything in me constricts until I collapse into
myself, soup in a
cocoon—neither caterpillar
nor butterfly.
I find the pages of our prologue everywhere and all the time.
They have been sliced from the spine and chewed around the edges
into shapes of hearts or fists (or maybe hearts and fists),
I am not told.
I find them scattered like compost confetti,
tossed into the wind from the car window,
resisting disintegration with the apple cores and popsicle sticks
piling up on the side of the road.
I find them wrapping over the rough edges of
manufactured famine, covering spots
wet from grief-expressed-as-sweat.
I find them stuck in my gullet, sharp-edged
violations and violence hacking away in my throat,
forever trying to clear.
Ours is a book of first chapters,
forty-seven re-drafts,
overwrought and underripe,
and I am neither here
nor there.
October 2025
Reading Between the Lines
Every migration story starts
with desire
and dis-ease.
Every person who moves is moving
to somewhere in the same moment
they are moving
away from somewhere else.
Immigrant and Emigrant—they build a whole life
and lineage in the liminal spaces—
a doorway, a waiting room, an airplane
suspended over an ocean.
Their own ground was ripped out from under them,
a trick that travels
across seas, it seems.
A curse that courses through the bloodlines
of our brown bodies.
I ask my parents why they left, but they only
want to talk about why they came.
They press a thick volume to
my chest and stack their palms against
my lips—inviting a kiss or muting a wish,
I do not know.
I am allergic to their out-breath, and my airway starts to close.
Everything in me constricts until I collapse into
myself, soup in a
cocoon—neither caterpillar nor
butterfly.
I
am stuck
in the in-between,
while my parents live their life as a series of
beginnings. There is no back story. They sprinkle
a trail of hastily-cut paper hearts in their wake, wrapping
over the rough edges of manufactured famine, covering spots
wet from grief-expressed-as-sweat.
The angry shards of violations and violence hack away in their throats,
forever trying to clear.
Ours is a book of first chapters,
too long blank,
and now,
written in my mother’s hand:
“…happily ever after, happily ever after, happily ever after…”
October 2025
Reading Between the Lines
Every migration story starts with desire and dis-ease.
Every person who moves is moving to somewhere in the same moment they are moving away from somewhere else. Immigrant and Emigrant—they build a whole life and lineage in the liminal spaces—a doorway, a waiting room, an airplane suspended over an ocean.
Their own ground was ripped out from under them, a trick that travels across seas, it seems. A curse that courses through the bloodlines of our brown bodies.
I ask my parents why they left, but they only want to talk about why they came. They press a thick volume to my chest and stack their palms against my lips—inviting a kiss or muting a wish, I do not know. I am allergic to their out-breath, and my airway starts to close. Everything in me constricts until I collapse into myself, soup in a cocoon—neither caterpillar nor butterfly.
I am stuck in the in-between, while my parents live their life as a series of beginnings. There is no back story. They sprinkle a trail of hastily-cut paper hearts in their wake, wrapping over the rough edges of manufactured famine, covering spots wet from grief expressed as sweat. The angry shards of violations and violence hack away in their throats, forever trying to clear.
Ours is a book of first chapters, too long blank, and now, written in my mother’s hand: “…happily ever after, happily ever after, happily ever after…”
August 2025
Process Statement
Like many immigrants, my parents came to this country to write their own stories. This past summer, I wanted to write about our stories—how we tell them, who tells them, what is included, what is erased, how our stories evolve, and how some of us have stories that don't appear on the written lines, but in between them. This poem explores revision as tricky and fickle: sometimes a truth-finder and other times a truth-hider. Which was more powerful for my parents: moving towards somewhere or away from somewhere else? And what does that mean for me and my story, living a life of historical voids—some created by colonial erasure, and others created as a survival instinct of the colonized? What is really lost when we leave a place? In terms of the process, once I created space through the line breaks, I was able to stretch out the poem and write the penultimate stanza, which both added more meaning and improved the pacing of the piece. Once the pacing felt right, the final version’s ending revealed itself to me. I got goosebumps reading the poem aloud, and that’s when I knew it was complete.
As a besharam (shameless) brown, queer, disabled (daily chronic migraine) woman, Neha M. Sampat centers life on multiple margins through her speaking, writing, creating, advocating, and acting up. Their poetry, essays, insight, and art are featured in publications and exhibits including The B'K Magazine, HNDL Magazine, Mission Belonging's Art Saves Lives, Time Magazine, Thrive Global, News India Times, and wildscape. Neha is a mama, box-breaker, and recovered people-pleaser. You can find her drinking chai, breaking generational trauma cycles, and making community cool again at @nehainprint (IG) and @nehaunerased (Substack) and in-person on Ohlone land in the SF Bay Area.
Read Issue One