suppose i dress for another night,
hair unfurled, skimming my bruised
shadow. i wait out the rain & raise the
damp month to dry, the days fluttering
with all the grace of moths battered against
a window. it's oct 14th & i have one chance to leave.
creamy pinpricks of light fist my hair
& it's shorn in one go, forming an exit wound,
sweet & unfamiliar like trisha and her broken
iphone buzzing in the movie theater.
the wind is bloated. pebbled curtains sop up
spilled milk. i knock on wood & worry about
the sunken portrait of a pear propped up in the
kitchen sink, which is overflowing with light &
twenty poems on post-its.
the day is wrung from my soapy palms,
trisha's smile sagging like an afterthought.
rachana hegde
Sweet
for T
buzz
love is squeezing oranges, pouring
milk, soaking clothes in warm soapy
water. it's a person. or the altitude
of a triangle quivering in sunlight.
i say, i am scared of living too long and
my god taps my shoulder, they ask
what is freedom but faithlessness?
god says i am an excuse for the skunks
skulking in brothels, a reason to wallow.
i mean fuck condoning violence.
you know i cannot fall asleep like this,
with the quiet thriving beneath. once, i
sleepwalked into a chapel and hatched
an apology. it felt like burying a skull
in a bucket of cold water or pulling apart
the edges of a worn carpet. these are just
ways to sing our history into being. one
of many paths merging in your mouth.
Rachana Hegde collects words and other oddities. Her work is a study in chaos and blurred memories, and she is dissonant in the company of strangers. Her poetry has been published in Alexandria Quarterly, Moonsick Magazine, and Hypertrophic Literary. You can find her reading, drowsy-eyed, or at www.rachanahegde.weebly.com.