rachana hegde

After Richard Siken

give me a rupee for every time I have flinched.

tonight I stitch drool into the pillowcase.

the sheets are nibbled. my teeth click.

I rinse a sponge,

and reach for the sparrow floating

in the school pond. it uncurls

violently beneath my hands,

all muscle and slow twitches:

a vagrant performing the final encore.

I walk home with jawfuls of tremor.

I ask myself, I wonder,

of swollen balloons like lumps of tissue,

shaven heads and girls untouched.

there's a pattern in the movement of the crowds,

frequencies so resonant they are my undoing.

I ask myself, I wonder,

(what it means to not care? to be unloved?)

milk froths beside baby

pictures. god marks the

plump of my cheeks.

my unwashed hair

settles in the hollow of

our house –

I ask myself, I wonder,

what is left when the sky seeps into our living room.

FLOAT