sickness
For dinner, I set two plates out of habit,
hunger shaped like memory. The table is smaller
now. Or maybe it’s me, folding into the space where
you should be, where you always were. I shove the steak
inside my mouth and chew carefully. Hunger curls
inside my ribs as I wait for the absence to take its first bite.
I take another bite—this is how I keep your ghost close,
I tell myself as I take a third bite. The salt shaker trembles
in my hand, spills too much over my wrist, but I leave it there,
pretend it’s seasoning and not some omen.
Outside, the sky is a wide-open mouth.
A dog barks three houses down, and I think
of how you always knew the difference between
a bark that meant danger and one that just meant
I’m here, I’m here, I’m still here.
I swallow silence, chewing around the space you left.
I take another bite and watch time gather itself
in the empty chair across from me. I do not
try to make it move. Instead, I chew carefully,
careful like the way you used to touch my face
when I was crying, like how you used to press your
hand to the small of my back, careful like how I keep
setting two plates.
Tomorrow, I will do this again.
Set two plates. Take slow bites.
Pretend the ghost of you still knows hunger.
the day after i buried my mother
is just another tuesday, somehow. the mail arrives,
bills and magazines and a coupon for a restaurant she liked
but never got around to trying. i throw it all on the counter,
watch the light stripe the floor, hear the kettle click off,
and make a cup of coffee for myself.
i drink it too fast, burn my tongue,
stand at the sink with my mouth open,
waiting for the heat to fade. she would have scolded me—
“why do you always rush through things that are meant to be savored?”
and i would have rolled my eyes and kept drinking.
the cat knocks over a glass of water.
the water spills, seeps into the cracks of the table,
finds every little space—i never notice until something spills—
to sink into. it reminds me of grief,
but i’m too tired for metaphors today.
outside, a couple argues on the sidewalk,
their voices sharp enough to cut through the heat.
i want to tell them, stop, stop, you don’t know how lucky you are
instead, i just watch them disappear down the street,
still fighting, still together.
i don’t cry today, not even once.
but i try to say her name out loud
and the syllables crumble in my mouth.
the body goes first. the world follows slowly.
her scent unspools from the fabric of things.
the bruise on my arm, from where she last held me,
begins to yellow.
there are dishes in the sink, a fork still balanced
on the rim of a bowl half-filled with water.
i should empty it, scrub away the dried yolk,
but instead i just stare at it, wondering if it will stay
exactly like this forever if i don’t move it.
i water the plants, even though i never remember to.
even though she was the one who kept them alive.
even though one is already brown at the edges,
curling in on itself, like it knows.
it’s thursday and we’re drunk, ditching my grandma’s funeral
the dock rocks beneath me, a loose tooth in the dark water.
you lean over me, your breath thick with gin, saying my name
in your slurred voice, something left out in the sun too long.
i tell you a sad story, or maybe i don’t. i just watch your mouth
move, the way your hands trace circles against the wood, restless.
maybe i make it up. a strawberry lie, plucked clean, tart and perfect.
somewhere, my mother is stacking plates in a quiet kitchen.
somewhere, a priest is lowering his voice over too-sweet wine.
somewhere, my grandmother is
or isn’t.
the air hums with cicadas, the sky sways, the long pull of summer.
or maybe that’s just me. again.
you’re still talking: time moving in circles, a star-shaped silence.
the robin blue dress my grandma wore on my seventeenth
birthday. Another strawberry lie rolls my tongue.
I tell you i’ll miss her.
you tell me i already do.
body cavities
as i weave my way through the pressed bodies
in the local bus, i find myself staring at the fading
tail of the bird through the window.
someone’s breath settles on my nape,
a child cries behind me, i watch the blue
bruise the orange of the sun.
someone spells a broken heart on the glass of
the window. i watch the names and colors
blur into the edges of black, bold shades.
i watch the bird swallow a splinter of the sky.
when i was a child i wanted to be that bird:
nameless, clueless, graceless.
my disfigured mind, and its many paradoxes;
it will be a dystopia, slippery with blood, like
my sister’s scalp during her open brain surgery.
sometimes i wish i could do that too:
watch slow ribbons of blood pool in the
crook of my neck, my elbow, behind my knee.
bodies splitting like ripe plums, skins shuddering,
light dispersing through someone’s open mouth.
as i get off the bus, i watch people cutting an
old tree using a chainsaw. i look up and find another
bird dancing in the blue. a sigh slips through my
mouth. finally. the spaces between the tall
buildings are now discolored in blue. someone
yells in excitement. i watch my sister’s mirror image
dissolve into the fractured orange of the sun.
the tree falls down just as i am about to cross the road.
thump. i wait to hear it scream. or break. or gasp.
the wind caught between its branches passes
over like the strangers at my sister’s funeral.
this is how it works, my mother said.
i wonder how much longer it will take.
To read more poems/interview by the same author, click here
About the Author
Sreeja Naskar is a teen poet whose work delves into the darker, more introspective aspects of the human psyche. Her poetry has been featured in various literary magazines, reflecting themes of emotion, identity, and the contrasts of light and shadow. Her debut collection, Of Sunflowers and Silhouettes, was published by Bribooks.
