this heat
laleh gupta
Previously published in Eunoia Review
it’s one in the morning and the air is thick enough to hold my weight but i say, stop give me a minute. i can feel its synapses flicking its nails against my eyeballs like hurryhurryhurry and i say, wait isn’t this how poetry starts? a subject, mantle pouring down their lips, homed in a shoebox, quiet. isn’t this how endings begin, one foot out and the other already in the air, eyes rolled so that you nearly fall forwards. my sister cradling a palm to her heart and whispering it’ll be okay it’ll be okay (it’ll be okay). and i stand still, walking in stilted shoes, the dirt observing me as if to say, did you know that a hero died here once? (and you are no hero)—i’m hammering some screws into a hardwood panel just to appease my anger and i can already see my mother coming in like, who is going to clean up this mess now? these feet on the couch, do they belong to you? there’s a mirror in my closet so i know where it ends, and there’s a hollow behind my dresser so i lock myself there and scream until my mouth blubbers apologies. my palm lines frowning, saying, for something so physical, what makes you wonder of your existence? look how these molecules separate for you; look, your physicality transcends geography; like, look you’re here and you’re so human. like look, everything outside, your comrades made happen, and are they not physical too? (but they are no comrades of mine)—and the palm lines, they say, there you have your answer. i kissed a boy in a car once and i thought hmm. plastic pelting the glass like WHY HAVEN”T YOU TAKEN YOUR MEDICINES YET? maybe i’d rather think of a hundred metaphors than have my lips pulled open; when the stick figures from my sketchbook tangled together to form me a bracelet i said, wow so this is what gratitude feels like. my friend asks me how much i’ll pay her for every word and here’s the thing: every second that passes i grow more indebted to her but she laughs and waves it off, asks, what’s your favorite book? says, come on we’ll swim in river water and stuff tumbleweed in our lungs, lay ourselves in dirt until the stars too turn brown. and she says, this is it. every second something new unfolds, and would you like me to push a memory into your mouth? and i say, that’s not how it goes and will you please stop now? and she says, come here now, be quiet; may the click-click-click-click of this pen lull you to sleep.
Laleh Gupta (she/her) is a fifteen-year-old student from Maharashtra, India. Pretty buildings make her heart beat fast, and she likes puns, double-sided blankets, sentences that trail off and… She is published in Blackbox Manifold and Eunoia Review, amongst others. She hopes you found some brightness to your day.