[s-en-juti]

A scimitar moon hangs at my window, But you've never needed her light to salt my scars. Touch her with bruised fingertips, And brush silver down my skin. And I'll be the color of your creation, Blues spilling from open veins.

senjutikundu

[s-en-juti]

Drop your fears along the shore and Purge them in saltwater, Like sand from your skin. There is no grief so great, That the ocean cannot swallow whole.

senjutikundu

[s-en-juti]

Not until you cross the river, the sea, the mountain, Do you realize how little you are, As you, as yourself. The color of ocher streets, baking under a kiln-color sun, Has leached into your soul. Your words are peppered like your grandmother's, With the heat of the chilies drying on her roof. Eventually you learn to reach out for cumin, coriander, turmeric on your shelf, And not handfuls of jeera, dhaniya, haldi. But the dreams that dazzle you into wakefulness are still, The blues of different skies.

senjutikundu

[s-en-juti]

This I will do for you: I will wear your sadness, As close to my skin, As my lover's breath upon my back. I will hold your heart, As soft as a flower, Between the scattered pages of our lives, For as long as you need me to.

senjutikundu

[s-en-juti]

Skin to skin, Lips trailing lies from throat to toe, Secrets nestle in the hollows of our hips. As heavy as guilt weighing down our bones, As light as paper dancers in the snow.

senjutikundu

[s-en-juti]

Under my knife, I am the color of my last swallow of wine. (And your stained bathroom tiles.) Skin curling through my fingers, Today I begin to peel you off my flesh,  Like so many strips of orange-rind.  Under my knife, I am clean again.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

Months later, I would learn that it didn't have to be me. It didn't have to be a girl with coral lips, in a silly little sundress. It could have been anyone - any girl who'd spent her life looking down at the floor, any girl who blossomed under your kindness like a flower turning its head to the sun. But if the girl could have been anyone, the situation never could have been. It wasn't lust, red-hot and thrumming through your body like a fever-ache. You had it planned out for months, months before you'd even met me. A splash of wine and a pellet of K. Your hand shivering up her thigh like a trail of slime. She'd begin to turn her head but you had it all planned by the time you met me, tangling hair, snapping wrists, limp neck, every scream, every twist of her hip,. Every please.

- s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

I am: Sheet-metal skin, Scraping against you. To the din of our Clockwork hearts, Rusting in sync together.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

The night comes alive in your eyes. Champa blossoms scrolling your temples, Stars of henna your palms. Smokewood shoulders marbled with gold, That leave a seawater tang on my tongue. Like the moon tugging at the tides, You stir storms beneath my skin.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

You see Lipstick lines on my wrists. I see Sadness carved out from my skin.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

Gold seeps through my fingers, When I catch the dying sun in my palms. But I let it loose, To light a halo around your hair.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

Your lips leave behind - Pink half-moons on plastic rims, Curls of frost on green glass walls, A nettle-sting bite on the brown of my back, Thistledown nibbles on the red of my mouth.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

The night comes alive in your eyes. Champa blossoms scroll your temples,. Stars of henna your palms. Smokewood shoulders marbled with gold,. Skin like seawater on my tongue. I have been waiting as long for your lips, As the parched earth waits for the rains.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

I see how my name curdles on your tongue, churns like bile through your body. Face twisted as though you would rather have sour milk rising up your throat, Than my name on your lips. So why is it that yours still froths on my mouth, Like a secret I've been dying to whisper all day, And thickens my voice like honey?

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

Anger takes only a moment, To root deep into your soul, To spread like wildfire over your skin. A forest springs up in a heartbeat, When you look the other way, And never notice, Until you feel your bones weighted down, By the burning jungle you bear on your back.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

I brought you the bloodied ribbons of my heart, And said: heal me. You placed it between your palms, And turned it to pulp. You took the ruin of my soul, And taught others to marvel, At the way the light glittered through its cut-glass fractures. You took my pain, And turned it into poetry.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i

[s-en-juti]

The living should not mourn the living. But your scent on my pillows never stops haunting my dreams, And I see your ghost at every familiar turn, Of the life we once built. Like the moon tugging at the tides, From a thousand miles away, You still stir storms beneath my skin.

s.e.n.j.u.t.i