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KAVITA

"Your parents married for love," she says,

but I haven't seen her in years

and she calls only seldom, but when she hangs up

the car breathes a sigh of relief

she's lost her language, you can hear it in her english

but with a foot in the past, she's neither here nor there

so I am filled with an overwhelming pity

and I think, I am sorry

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

| I am sorry that you are a

| product of environments

| that made you fit

| inside their boxes.

| _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I am sorry you grew up cramped, knees tucked

and I hope you find your peace.

I think, I think-- I sit there in silence.

"for love," she says.

he told me later, she had her nose done as soon as she could afford it.

OF A FEATHER

how could you expect anything else?

how could you expect a cuckoo to be a crow?

you forged me in the womb that held your fight

and find it surprising when I came out spitting fire

taught me to reach for more, to be relentless

then draw back when I want to climb higher

were you not born with a hollow?

both of you were not born swallows

you made me out of yourselves and wonder why I was born hungry

THE THING THEY DON'T TELL YOU ABOUT LOCKETS

is that they hurt more, sometimes

see the unscarred unmarred before

see the shadow of the hand cast upon it

it's a quiet grief, it's love

I see you, I see you not

I see who you were and I love him

in case that you forgot

and yes, it's poetic

and by way of which, aesthetic

to linger by the glass, the door,

longing for more

to look back with eyes stained red and blue

try, all my might, to reach through

I painted a chapel around the you in my mind

I say I met you in a church because even then you were sacred

now you're there in the face, for I was none the wiser

to realize your captors, creeping in spiral

I cannot reach you, I preserved you in thyme

in golden amber, in a golden day

I cannot do much more than imagine

if I'd just walked a different way.

#sometimes it's all about having your lover as the background of your apple watch.#and that's beautiful too

UNTITLED 2

when my mother is angry, it rolls off her in waves

thick tendrils of smog leeching at the air, choking

every word becomes a snarl, every movement sharp-toothed and primal; yet,

every loud noise is petulant and childish, a tantrum

I wait for the pot to stop spilling over and cry itself out.

UNTITLED 1

his heart beats like a butterfly / under your fingertips

he is trying to be as still as you are

but his breath betrays him in shake

and you hold him like you could be / in Pompeii

SURFACE TENSION

I'm not even human. I'm residue. I'm a tempest of emotions. I don't have that mysterious undefined principle, I am merely living as science dictates: breath, change, growth, reaction to stimuli--

I want to die I want to live I want to be a poet and be the subject of a poem I want to be immortalized and forgotten I want to kiss a boy I want to scream. I'm a blinding rage, I'm the anger spilt over and left. I'm the green when you walk inside from the sunshine I'm made of tomorrow I'm rooted so firmly in yesterday it makes me ache I'm terrified and overconfident and I'll do it all to feel something--

I don't know when it was so acutely identified but the life in me is draining and I'm running off of fumes, of secondhand smoke, of You and your corporeal form, if it reached out to touch me I might dissolve, be made of vapor, or mirage, the Tyndall effect--

my eyes fill to their edges, don't spill over.

I HAD A DREAM ABOUT YOU 2

and we were in the movie theater

and I don't remember the movie,

but I remember

the light reflecting off your lashes

when we were burrowed in the dark

ACROSTIC 4

god,

or any

other word held in such reverence can't

describe