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I met Kwiatkowksi over a series of events in September and October of 2025, as he traveled in the US with the Cheuse Center at George Mason University and Yale University. Grzegorz Kwiatkowksi is the Cheuse Center’s Visiting Writer from Poland, and the center is collaborating with him on a series of events that mark the tenth anniversary of the Cheuse Center, founded in 2016. The center was named after Alan Cheuse, whose father was a Jewish refugee to America, from Stalin’s Russia (now Ukraine).

The third broadside project featuring poetry by Moriel Rothman Zecher, art by Allison Grace Erdelyi, and design by Kevin Jones is a deep collaboration reflecting on our common humanity. .

I came to the Talo, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, with a head full of second-hand knowledge. Arunachal Pradesh and Assam had existed for me mostly as abstractions—borderlands in textbooks, settings in novels, places mentioned more often than known. This journey was an attempt to let those fragments loosen and rearrange themselves through direct encounter.

The locals say a stampede of Eriskay ponies predicts a single death. Last year, one of Eriskay Isle’s oldest men did not see spring. Which horse starts the stampede, and what does it sound like, feel like? I picture their small herd breathing heavy, a trail of trampled sand behind them. I arrive in the summer. Eriskay Isle is small, just 2.5 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, encircled by perfect white beaches. The ocean is so clear, I can see all the way to the bottom, can count each fish in each school that swims past. I climb the boulders on the east shore and plug my nose before jumping in. It’s cold; it takes my breath away.

I came to the Talo, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, with a head full of second-hand knowledge. Arunachal Pradesh and Assam had existed for me mostly as abstractions—borderlands in textbooks, settings in novels, places mentioned more often than known. This journey was an attempt to let those fragments loosen and rearrange themselves through direct encounter.

I know exactly when and where I am the first time my sister tells me she is pregnant. It is snowing outside, and I am barefoot in my apartment in Fairfax, watching flakes press against the window. I am one year into my MFA in Creative Writing, far along enough to sound like I belong when I say things in class like “So… is the mother a metaphor? or “The dog feels symbolic, but I’m not sure of what.”, but not so far along that I didn’t flinch when people ask me what home means (which, by the way, I’ve learnt is a very popular question in creative settings).

Lately, all I can bring myself to eat is buckwheat soba. Hot, cold, iced or sauteed, dipped in sauce or submerged in broth, ladled from the communal pot or withdrawn from a plastic bento box, topped with a raw egg or vegetable tempura, a side of boiled seaweed or gyudon beef, eaten crouching, standing, even running–yet always, every meal, those same, spotty gray noodles. It doesn't taste like much, but, when I get hungry, I hear that constant rhythm of slurps in the distance, like footfalls thudding down the endless Tokyo cityscape...