particles of plasma and the sawdust in your hands,

what a raucous disaster we made.

i can’t look at all the misery -

the ruined edges of bright white linen,

the wilted look in your eyes.

for a second i find a flash of forgiveness,

when i blink, i feel the sun rise.

melon melts on my lips,

previous courage dying as

juice dries on shaking hands.

how do i feel about you?

the same way i feel about waterfalls,

sensory overload that drowns out my thoughts,

an open dispensary of feelings

that flow and mist

steady, unnerved

a pillar of grace.

the way i feel about you is the summer sky,

deep oranges and blues paint highs and lows that

cut deep into me, run through my veins and flood

my system. your persistence nearly pummels my sense,

your beauty almost undoes me.

the way i am is fluttery dust,

flickers of gold in watery eyes,

glimpses of good behind grey.

the way i am is fickle and far-gone,

and i think i am best when i fly.

i.

and there is something cold about the way

dry fingers burn on rusty stoves.

there is something sweet about how

flesh shrivels-

the woman bleeds

within these four walls-

no, the woman will bleed here,

always.

ii.

it was a cold cold morning

when it had been passed on to me,

there was something cruel about how

the note was crippled and-

but she had smiled at me;

i had liked how her lips felt against my cheek-

it had reeked of finality.

that was the last time i saw

aunt z.

iii.

it was a hot hot morning

when the note was opened.

aunt z had been beaten to

death and the note

reeked of warm blood

now.

easy cake recipe (for beginners)

i could see how her pale frail

fingers had scribbled it.

iv.

ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups whole milk (or 3/4 cup heavy cream mixed with 1/2 cup water)

-whisk 3 cups flour, the baking powder and salt in a bowl. whisk until they no longer cry. whisk until every last breath is crushed from their ribs. beat 2 sticks butter and the sugar in a large bowl with a mixer on medium-high speed. beat until the bleed to death, like-

no, until they are light and fluffy, yes. about three minutes. three minutes are enough to kill a woman. three minutes are enough to scream out in terror. three minutes are enough to be not heard (or are they?). beat for three minutes. now reduce the mixer speed to medium, (the neighbours must not hear). leave the mix alone, dead things don't talk; now beat in the eggs, one at a time, slowly, deliberately, scraping down the bowl as needed. beat in the vanilla. It must not reek of dead flesh under the sofa. beat in the flour mixture in 3 batches, Head Torso Legs alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with flour, until just smooth.

v.

and there is something rotten-

no, why must there always be something,

there is nothing left.

The tension in this house in July is worse than any fight I’ve ever been in. The humid heat, the aggravated sighs from Mom as Dad sits with his eyes fixed ahead, either oblivious to or deliberately ignoring the intense discomfort in the air. My brother Dan spends most of his time locked up in his room, lost in video games and forming friendships with strangers twice his age who evidently are better company than the mess that exists downstairs. I don’t blame him - I avoid any place where Mom and Dad are together as much as I can, but I wish Dan wouldn’t leave me alone with them at dinner. It would be nice to have an ally in the storm that is silence and cold stares over a half-frozen microwave meal on dusty tableware.

“I’m thinking of applying to Cambridge,” I tell them in my gentlest let’s-not-just-sit-here voice. “I saw the application requirements and I think I can pass the geography course assessment.”

My dad turns his head toward me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, honey. Tuition in England is cheaper, and who wouldn’t want to study at the birthplace of Newton’s greatest ideas?”

“We’re not so poor we can’t afford American tuition,” my mom snaps, glaring at the back of Dad’s head, “and I don’t want you in Europe. You know how people there are, a big socialist lot who think they’re God’s gift to the Earth.”

The mood goes back to tense and silent because I’m not in the mood to fight over something I didn’t feel that strongly about to begin with. I have no intentions of really applying to Cambridge, even if it is an idealistic dream. Next fall, I’ll probably be at the state university next door, working at the campus bookstore to pay off my loans and save up enough money to get the hell away from here. I get the sense Mom and Dad can’t wait for Dan and me to be gone too. Then they’ll be able to go their separate ways physically instead of being trapped up in our colonial saltbox house when mentally, they’ve been divorced for years.

As soon as the last bite of uncooked rice is in my mouth, I try not to make my rush to get out of the dining room as obvious as it feels. I’ve gotten pretty good at it; Mom and Dad both think I’m just in a hurry to get to the 7:30 Zoom I told them I had for the French course I’m taking at my local community college this summer. The class is actually asynchronous, but I sure hope God doesn’t punish me for the white lie. During the school year, drama rehearsal and newspaper keep me busy until after dinner and distract me from my disastrous home life. In the summer, though, there’s no buffer between myself and my parents other than my workload and AirPods.

As I’m lying in bed, I pray Suki asks to hang out tomorrow. Maybe her mom will make curry and she’ll let me sleep over. My eyes finally close, sleep drowning out the muffled voices downstairs that I’ve gotten so good at treating as white noise.

The next morning, Mom herds me into the car, telling me we’re going bathing suit shopping. A tiny part of me gets excited, remembering our mom-and-daughter days from when I was little. The wiser side of me quickly shuts that down, because I know now that trips alone with Mom are less about the task itself and more about the car ride. It’s on the way to wherever we’re going that she likes to unload all of her pent-up anger at Dad ontp me, planting seeds of hatred and spilling every ounce of trauma she’s ever had into my pool of thoughts. It’s because the doors are locked, and she knows that even though I want to, I won’t have the balls to jump out of the car and onto the highway.

Today, as we’re driving down Route 110 with the air conditioning on full blast, she opts out of her usual introduction of adjectives to describe Dad (lazy, selfish, cold, embarrassing, loud, ugly, poor) and cuts straight to the chase. “I’ve been having an affair. I’m leaving your father and moving in with Michael next month.”

I just stare out the window, apparently too numb to feel anything other than relief. “Sounds good,” I finally say when I feel her eyes pushing me to respond, “Suki told me Target’s having a bikini sale this week.”

after Hylas and the Nymphs

I will return, Hercules. Fear not, this land

holds cellars of nectar & ambrosia— every grove

and valley pulses with the slumbering of the half-

dead. He wrapped my torso, parsed in silk. Said

may the promise of victory rise upon your laurels.

Fare you well, my love. Be swift. Know no evil.

Look not to the nymphs of the river, they wait for men

to stumble upon their glade, then make nests of their flesh.

You know maidens, they like to tease. His eyes like fists.

The forest had a stillness. The leaves, my shifting audience

to a lone man’s soliloquy. The oaks parted. The sun crawled. At the river’s

edge, I felt no divinity, no gods pulled me forward & no mortals held me

back. Only naiads. Come into the water, my love. We raise no harm.

Us mistresses of the sea, bloom pearls during childbirth, wash away into lake-

foam. We know no Olympus. But you, a God, you of men & fire & a furnace

you staking wars of heaven and earth? Stay, here where the lily pads make

silly fancies with the breeze. Here, where the reeds obey only the rubber-sheen

of the dew after a rain. Here, where we were grown, from Gaya’s lips, us

the sinful harmonies before the pipe loses its guiding breath.

The crickets fling their bodies to the shore, there where the grass

is always green, where the zinnias never pale, where the salmon— spawn

always trace the riverbeds home. Now a hand from the surface, rippling the

join of blood. Maybe I know her name. Maybe I was a god because I could

not bear to be a nymph, to be half-mortal. To run with all this price of light.

Every tendon of her body curves into my shadow, till we are one. So this tenderness

is our undoing. So all the flowers in her hair dance upstream. Did the thunder

quiet its own rumbling? I hadn’t quite noticed.

Only the sound of her lips on my full bones.

we stood on the bus as the downpour flooded

in & in

& in

& in.

the windows wept, and for once we understood

something about their cold glass hearts. the way they

watched & listened. you clung to me like a stray cat

who had found its owner again, and for once i understood

the hunger of the animal. looking down at you and wanting to think

of nothing but the water. our clothes clung to our backs

like matted fur in the cold wash of the stoplights.

unforgiving. turning every person to ice. the winter came

and froze our hands over, so we forgot the shape of our own bodies.

we closed our mouths to keep our hearts warm. mother nature

wired her jaw shut. stopped telling us stories

of flowers & birthings & brightness. in the middle of the night

i awoke, and i pressed my fingers to your wrist to remember

we were alive, and the summer bled warm and sweet within.

this room smells like summer: melted popsicles and shades of red. in here i feel the warm defeat of someone who has given too much.

last june i watched dark green leaves turn light, translucent skin and kelly capillaries mimicking the wash on my jeans. it smells like summer in march, teasing what can’t be had in the thick of emerald storms. it feels like april in this room, rain on purple bruises, a hope that’s long been lost.

i can’t wait for callused heels, for sunburnt cheeks and muddy streaks on well-worked legs. last august i longed for a burnt orange fire, for the leaves to start writing their wills; now i itch for sugared snow, for toes in the sand and to lose my handwriting in favor of smiles and talk.

this room smells like summer: unattainable flame, a lingering lust for freedom and untethered sun.

after leila chatti

No birds. No stars. No one remembering how they’re

dead but how brilliant they are. No one saying that

the sun’s just another star, no shaping it in the face of

a lover long lost. No more other realities. No more other lives.

The truth is that we get this one and then we blow it

before we ever had the chance. Again, no birds. No more

metaphors about how they’re flying and how they’re free.

I can’t stand being so full of envy anymore. No more you.

Who in God’s name is the you, ever, anyways? This poem

isn’t for you. I want it to be for me. I want to be selfish in

a piece for once. I’m so tired nowadays. There are no

bird wings or Greek muses that could change that. I’m scared,

and it is not poetic. There is no rebirth that makes this better.

It doesn’t matter that we see the same moon at night, or

the fact that you can pretend I’m the lover stuck in it. I’m just

angry all the time that it saw you first. Would you still love me

if you didn’t have to. If I didn’t say that you’re the one in some

flash fiction piece where you save me. Would you still love me if

you knew how hopeless I was. I said this poem wasn’t for you, but

maybe I’m just angry all the time that you can only appear in stanzas,

anyways. I will make no euphemisms. I am hurt and alone.

there’s nothing admirable in a last kiss,

a dying wish, a final fateless laugh.

tealights hang from your nails, sprinkle beams onto backs

bring a tragic, tired girl to her brink.

there’s no happy-ever-after for defiled jasmine flowers

for the ones who believed without proof-

my blindness made me lose my temper

i am nothing but a lost cause, a bad mood.

there are no awards for cardboard boxes

limp from too much weight, no prizes for plastic bags

that only asked for a moment’s break and then

they break and people ask why i thought she was fine

she’s not fine, she is thick red marks on what she thought she got right

she is we regret to inform you she is staying up at night asking

how did it end up this way?

in the morning, she is just as she was

a smile on her face, hidden pain and timeless grace.