Ganga Keeps What You Leave
They accused me of the filth they poured in & I internalized that mouths become najis-free when they point. I begin where the drains kowtow. Tin mouths cough suds & dyes into me, night after night, until my colorless skin learns new colors. Blau that burns. Claret that will not settle. When fajr comes, pujaris arrive with flowers stiff as sovereigns & the flowers natate like apologies that do not last. I carry them anyway. I carry everything.
Upstream striplings jump from the embankment. Their costae flash like white oars; their laughter severs the heat. They land with neem soap wrapped in newspaper, with shirts knotted like mysteries. One of them spits into me before he dives, a wee proclamation. I hold him. I hold them all always. They surface with water slicking their hair, nictating, nictating, as if light itself has cognized to sting.
‘Don’t swallow,’ one howls, half a quip, half an orison.
I keep the rule & rive it. I annex what I am given & give it back transfigured.
By zuhr, the ghats sweat. An apsara with bangles thin as icicles steps down, knees knocking, sari hem lifted from my purl. She lowers a copper pitcher, fills it, empties it back, fills it again, as if recurrence could cleanse intention. Her pati waits with his cell phone, the screen scintillating like a second sol. He photographs bhakti the way other photographs gashes.
‘Careful,’ he advises. ‘It’s filthy.’
‘It’s hieratic,’ she counters, and the words trespass each other in the air and traffic places.
In the asr the barges scrape my osseous tissues. I taste oil & oxidation. A dead susu drifts by, its eyes open, prying. Polymer bags cling to my ankles like cherubs who won’t let go.
When the whirlpool picks up, they clap. Ovation for nothing.
At the chai stall near the bend, bastards sit with glasses that remember lips. Steam levitates; gossips do too. A bastard leans towards an apsara whose sindoor is fading, their knees almost touching. They never touch. They lean & lean until leaning lapses into lingo.
‘Your pati?’ the bastard asks.
‘At work,’ she hisses.
‘At home?’
She smizes. ‘Always.’
Their tender woo skims me. I absorb the sound of what is not wooed. I absorb the weight of waiting.
Maghrib arrives with smoke. Swamped city loosens its belt & zip. On the steps, a balakrishna finds a soaked condom snagged on a reed & flicks it with a stick. It bobs, stubborn. He cachinnates too loudly.
‘Lucky river,’ he yells. ‘It gets everything.’
I do. I do. I do. I unerringly do.
Later, when the lanterns come out & the chants turn into mandala, a bundle slips from an old woman’s hands. No one looks long. It submerges without shriek. I strangle around it. Khāmōshī is a kind of mercy; mercy is a kind of weight. I carry the weeness of it downstream, past shrines & slums, past the bridge where naked couples count passing trucks instead of heartbeats.
Isha sharpens. The striplings return, quieter now. One of them — thin, with a cicatrix like a question on his knee — wades in up to his waist. He stares at the tenebrosity as if it might answer.
‘Do you ever get unsullied?’ he solicits me, not expecting anything.
I reply by speeding.
At the bend, a factory unlatches its throat. Aqua thickens. Foam amasses like a fucking thought that won’t leave. The stripling steps back, startled, then chortles, then coughs. ‘Again,’ his homie says. ‘Again.’
They dare each other the way bastards dare fate: with banters that bruise.
When they desert, the luna lowers itself into me & saunters. I morph into many moons, none of them whole. A pujari throws ash. A bālak throws a bottle. A wench throws a wish wrapped in filiform. Filiform tangles with fishing line; line entangles with hair; hair interlaces with weeds. Everything drills how to knot.
Downstream, a funeral pyre curtsies towards me. Sparks hop like nervous avians. A scion watches the wood founder to do its work.
‘Not enough ghee,’ someone susurrates.
‘Too much wind,’ another mutters.
The agni argues with the water. I win by waiting.
Near tahajjud, the bastard returns alone. He ablutes his hands, scours until the skin reddens, scours until scouring evolves into a plea. He voices into the dark.
‘Absolve me,’ he sobs.
I answer by lifting the musk of oil & flower back to him, mixed, inseparable. He quakes, as if absolution could be swallowed.
By the time the city slumbers, I am stuffed with breath & refusal. I am turgid with the day’s decision. I move them on. This is my only prowess: to keep going & going & going.
Before fajr, the thin stripling returns. He paces where the light is weakest & slips. His homies shout. Arms thrash. The water clenches like a jaw that obliterated how to open. I annex him & give him back, transfigured. They pull him out, coughing, ojos wild.
‘See?’ one hushes, trembling. ‘It wants us.’
‘No,’ the scarred stripling says, voice breaking & hardening at once.
‘It keeps us.’
When prabhat comes, the papers will broadcast accident. The pujari will broadcast faith. The factory will broadcast compliance. The lovers will broadcast nothing. The city will lave its hands in me & call them najis-free.
I will cradle that too.
I am not pristine. I am not finished. I am what bides when everyone leaves something behind & expects it to liquefy. I do not liquefy. I speed on, burdened & bright, teaching everything that penetrates me how to leave different than it drew near.
Hannan Khan is a nefelibata, poet, fiction writer, editor, and scholar of literature & linguistics from Pakistan. He combs through moments of love, death, delirium, and relational complexities, seraphically tracing what’s breathed and what flickers unbreathed. He is the winner of the Native Voices Award 2025 for his poetry collection Isn’t Cooked Is Cursed, and a finalist for the Rhysling Award 2026. He is longlisted for the erbacce-prize for Poetry 2026. He sips coffee & reads Manto. His work has appeared in IHRAM Literary Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, Evergreen Review, Eye To The Telescope, Twenty-two Twenty-eight, Abyss & Apex, Neon & Smoke, Winds Of Asia, 4LPH4NUM3R1C, Uncanny Magazine, Usawa Literary Review, Native Voices II: The Cry of Creation, Full Bleed, Ghudsavar, Workers Write!, and is forthcoming in Gutter Magazine, and Cahava Literary Journal.