2 poems, 1 fiction

by Aakriti Karun

KC High

cleansing self-awareness meditation (Guided)

While meditating, I marvel
at my body’s ability to un-
hold my self. My lungs
are sirens. They bait breath in, sigh
me into the lit cage of my skeleton. (Let
go, says the instructor) I ease out
like a disease, first to the liver, then the veins
where all obscene things
slink. (Distance your
self, says the instructor) A slip
through the nostril (Sink,
says the instructor). Watch my limbs go limp
with relief, glad
to be rid of me. I’ll admit it—
I’ve been a bit of a bitch from the start,
darting into doors that were meant to keep
me out. Undoing stitches, scraping nail
on bone. Leaving dark, wet
footprints behind. But believe me
when I say I’ve loved my body too—
I’ve adored it. I’ve sunk skin
to bone to un-
sculpt its true image.
Dolled it up,
hollowed
& hallowed
& worshipped it. And look
what it’s done. Wearing me like a pair of
old, broken glasses, cranked up on a worn
forehead as it wanders around asking, mournfully—
honey, have you seen my
self anywhere? I could have sworn
I had her just a moment ago.
These are old tricks, but who can say
they’re not good ones?

weight

Our grief weighs us.
I dream I drag
my brother’s corpse into a room.
His body still warm,
blooded. I hold him until he is cold. I pinch his cheek,
find it flaccid. I sob. I wake sobbing, find him
alive. Father tells me grandma
is lifeless. This is the word he uses. He never says
dead or passed away. Lifeless, as if she is only missing
something, as if everything else is still intact. I drag
my nose up my brother’s cheek again and again. I kiss him
on the eyelids, his forehead, his chin. I press my ear to his chest,
hear his wheezing. Carry me, he says. I do, even though
he is as tall as I am. I wrap my arms around his shins and lift. Already
I know this death will pull us closer. I carry him to the balcony. I worry
he will lunge. I stay anyway, weigh him in my arms for hours. I tell him
it was a heart attack. I show him the death certificate, which says
BROUGHT DEAD. I tell him she was only sixty-seven. He takes it bravely, he sobs.
I haven’t seen her in so long, he says. A year, two years? She’s going to be
so old. Carry me, he says.

love story

1. We call them hamburgers (H1, H2, H3…) because that’s what they are. Greasy. Overdone. Unexciting. Each time we fall for them. We give in to their fake crisp lettuce, their warm oozing cheese—but when we bite, the bread is soggy, the burger bland. We never know why we keep eating. Why we sit there afterwards, wiping the grease from our lips. Watching our empty plate. Wanting a new hamburger and hating ourselves for it.

2. I have this nightmare about doing pull-ups in a long dark room. I’m topless but have no breasts, and no one is concerned about this. The floor is a black animal that lunges after me. I believe I’m alone. H1 takes a video of me almost falling then grasping onto the pull-up bar at the last second. In the video I pull myself up with great effort, each arm contorting like twine. H1 points to the camera and says, There was someone else in that room. Look here. The curtains are moving. Do you see that man? He was watching you, closing the curtains.

3. I tickle everywhere, even on my arms or my shoulders. I don’t need to be touched. I only require the thought of tickling, or the pretence of it, the phantom movement of wind on my legs, cloth on my skin, hair on my neck. When H1 approaches me, my skin erupts into gooseflesh everywhere, and if I haven’t waxed, the hair on my arms glares upwards, the tips sharp and reproachful. I can’t bear to be hugged sometimes—something about the breasts and how they get stuck in-between—how do you solve this? Like the tongues when kissing—where do they go? We are two bodies, two sets of body parts; there is no getting around this.

4. I’m convinced there’s something wrong with my feet, something about their shape or texture that attracts dirt and sticks to it. I can walk barefoot on a spotless floor and if H1 grabs my ankle—uses one hand to undo the laces and the other to pull off the shoe—he’ll see my soles are coal-black, covered in a thick cake of dust. If I scraped the dust off each night and saved it in a tub, what could I do with it? Where would I live?

5. I take the other staircase if he’s taking this one. Once, I approach the door of our classroom, then realise H1 is standing on the other side, preparing to leave it, and I can see how we will collude here, how he will step forward to leave and I will step forward to enter and our bodies will walk side by side as we side-step each other—I could angle my shoulder to brush against him if I wanted to. He catches my eye; I panic. I take a quick, terrified step back. I wait at a distance until he has left. My heart is a black animal, lunging after me.

6. I must watch Knives Out again. All I can remember of it is how close my head was to his shoulder, my arm to his arm. Once, I lean close to him to whisper, The actress? Do you recognize her? I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere. At half-time, the lights flash on and I flinch. I hide beneath the curtain of my hair, refuse to look at him. It must have been a good movie, though I cannot be sure.

7. I have never seen the actress before.

8. H1 cleans his computer screen each day. H1 throws away the popcorn tub when he exits the theatre. H1 plans never to drink, which surprises me even years after he has left. H1 stands next to me on the school balcony, watching the kids sing and dance on the makeshift stage. H1 says something that’s lost in the wind, and I am not brave enough to ask him to repeat himself. We say nothing. This is the closest I will ever be to him, but we do not know this yet. The entire side of my body is pressed against his, the entire of the other side shivering, cold.

9. Through the nights, H1 asks me questions I want to answer but can’t. He says, Okay I’ll wait, and then he waits. The waiting makes my hands shake, and he doesn’t respond to anything I say until I answer. Once he falls asleep while he’s waiting. All night I don’t sleep. The next morning we talk again and I’m embarrassed at the string of messages I left last night, each one increasingly desperate, wounded. I try not to be stiff but I am goosefleshed, prickly. A black lunging animal with the head of a doll. H1 has stuffed toys in his room that he’s never been able to give away. He tells me this without shame.

10. We call them unicorns once we no longer have them. Unicorn A, B, C and so on. I have that dream about Unicorn A again. He’s older, and his nose is flat but then he opens his mouth and I see his throat is long—so long—which is how I know it’s him. He says nothing, only looks at me as if to tell me, There is someone else in this room. Look here. The curtains are moving.