Laceration by Bhairavi Ponkshe

Absence of Sound by STACY DAGUIAR

Ask my name and I’ll utter a thousand words that only sound like it.

“Do what is necessary,” they say like necessity is what brings me to you. Like necessity is what brings me here. You say a person is either a question or an answer, But haven’t we used up all the question marks we possibly could? Defining ourselves in questions, when they hoped for an answer.

I draw every syllable of my name on the ground, asking you to utter each one as I erase it. You get stuck in between and now I’m torn apart. I’m half ground and half you. Who are we now? You pluck a bougainvillaea and leave it over my half-erased name. Grieving / the shrine of me that could have been. Vulnerability indeed makes you a bad lover.

“Do what is necessary,” they say So I shred my skin over the ground, The half-won battle of lost identities. And pray, pray, pray A thousand eyelids for you to crawl under. For questions, that sound like my name, and answers that sound like yours. I live, Like it’s a necessity and not a deliberate choice to mourn. Embossed, under three and a half eyelids You lacerate my heart And I spill. My presence, a nexus between two absences. But tell me, Will you contain me now?

Bhairavi Ponkshe

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