The prompt is inspired by Ilya Kaminsky's Poem 'We lived happily during the War' The women in my family are without a home by Pritha Jain the women in my family are disgraced artists weeping into the after-hours but never once repenting their crimes enough. a haloed moon drools and watches in waning silence as their vermillion digs a sharpened claw into the fault lines of their foreheads. curses rot at the peripheries of dadi's face as she spits them back at her husband durin

a week of waking up with lead in my bones adulthood cuts through the air i breathe in the sharp monotones of hourly water reminders. a baby spider wills fifty-six different muscles to traverse planes of a bathroom wall and challenges gravity along the way. the sunlight wins a game of tug-of-war against my eyelids and i wake up with a hungry mother's prayer on my lips. i am running out of breath and i want the world to stop spinning for a goddamn second. there is a theory that

by Pablo Picasso Pristine Lineage of Shrinking Women by Pritha Jain /you cannot light yourself on fire to be the center of somebody else's universe/ my body is birthed, a fallacy a crinkle in our otherwise pristine lineage of shrinking women. i take after my father in height which is to say, my mother finds treason etched into the cartilage running alongside my traitorous bones. my mother is not a religious person, you see but she names me after the reincarnation of the godde