concourse A, body unclaimed

By Sreeja Naskar

there is a body lying face down in the headline.
no name. no next of kin. no time to grieve.
i keep walking. we all do. it’s the terminal.

excuse me. excuse me. i need to breathe
in a language not shaped like a siren.
someone’s boarding pass flutters in the air,
     another prayer left unanswered.

last night, i dreamt of a girl
holding her brother’s broken sandal.
her face was a map of exit wounds.
her silence louder than jets.

they announce a delay. again.
i buy water i can’t afford.
i watch a man scream in his phone
  and wish i had the guts.

forgive me, mother. i ate news again
  for breakfast. choked on the names.
    the bodies.
      the borders.

once, i wrote a poem about a tree
  and believed it could save something.
that was before i knew
  how many bones the soil keeps quiet.

yes. there is a woman crying into her sleeve.
yes. i pretend i don’t hear.
  because if i start crying now
  i will never make it to gate 12.

a child hands me a sticker
with a star on it.
i pocket it.
like forgiveness.
like i didn’t throw the last one away.

i promise.
i promise.
  i am trying
  to stay human.
  and notice.
​
even as the lights hum louder.
even as the overhead voice
  calls someone else’s name.
even as my coffee goes cold
    and the war starts again.

---

(future) daughter

By Sreeja Naskar

i already know she’ll hate me.
not because she wants to— 
but because my love
will come with rules
written in languages she won’t speak
until she bleeds.

she’ll ask why i flinch
when she brushes my hair too softly.
why i salt the bathwater.
why my prayers
are always mumbled
and never work.

i’ll teach her
how to hide pads in her sleeve
like weapons.
how to lie
politely.
how to fold a “no”
into a sentence
that won’t get her followed home.

she’ll ask why
i don’t want her
to talk to men
with clean hands.
i won’t answer.
i’ll just hand her the keys
to all my escape routes.
tell her to memorize
every window latch in the house.

she’ll cry
& i won’t touch her.
not because i don’t want to— 
but because no one
taught me how to hold
a child
without shaking.

·
​
​some nights,
she won’t come home on time.
i’ll sit on the floor,
rocking my guilt
like it’s her
just to remember
what a body
feels like
before the world
takes it.

---

she kept her grief in a pill bottle marked calcium

By Sreeja Naskar

every sunday she filled the vitamin tray
and i thought she was rosarying her way
through survival.
C for skin. D for bones.
calcium for
whatever was
hollowing her out from the inside.

the bottle said strength,
but i saw the crack in her molar
when she bit into toast.

·
​
she never cried.
not even when the neighbor’s son
died face-first in the monsoon drain.
instead, she stirred her tea clockwise,
clockwise,
until the sugar dissolved.
until something did.​

·

she folded socks like regrets— 
tight, hidden, paired up for someone else’s comfort.
her lipstick lived on coffee mugs
more than on her own mouth.
i kissed the rim once,
just to see what she tasted like.

·

the kitchen sink smelled
of something old.
not death exactly— 
but the kind of sour that means
something was left too long
& no one wants to be the first to touch it.

·

in the fridge:
expired painkillers,
a peach that had gone grey from the inside out.
plants sagged heavy with kindness.
overwatered,
just like me.

·

she never told me not to cry.
just handed me a towel
that already smelled like her foundation.
i learned to mop up emotion
before it stained the grout.

·

when i left for school,
she pressed a capsule into my palm.
not calcium.
but silence,
in pill form.

i swallowed it
without water.

·

now i measure grief
in teaspoons of laundry detergent.
buy the same brand of tea.
keep my own painkillers
in alphabetical order.

nothing is out of place.
except the part of me
that still waits
for her to scream.
for anything
to spill.

---

i bled glitter in the crawlspace

By Sreeja Naskar

been tryna un-girl myself since the third time
the man said “smile, sweetheart”
and i smiled my tongue into a noose.

body’s a costume i never picked.
zipper stuck.
god left a tag that reads “property of no one.”
(but they still tried to own it, didn’t they?)

 —spit on me in church,
said “you confuse the children.”
i was the child.
i was the confusion.
i wore both like barbed wire.

he said:
“you’ll grow out of this.”
and i did.
right out of myself.
out of skin. out of name.
out of ma’am.
out of boy.
into what the fuck are you?
and i said:
exactly.

rain from bloodclouds again today— 
soaked my binder clean through,
made the scars on my chest sing.
(they sing in lowercase. always whisper.)

i kissed a girl in a bathroom stall
and felt the whole damn bible crack its spine.
thought maybe god was peeking
under the stall door
with a belt in his hand.

     (he didn’t stop us.)

i am not what you asked for.
i am teeth where the prayer should be.
i am boygirlghostthing with a switchblade tongue
and knees that don’t fold for anyone.

they offered me heaven
and i asked if it had gender.
they said yes.
so i spat blood on the application.

been trying to disappear
from the waist down /
from the label out /
from every locker room bruise /
every she that burned my scalp— 

& when the rain comes— 
blood, glitter, spit,
pronouns they tried to beat out of me— 
​
i don’t run.
i open my mouth
and let it all in.
let it pool in my lungs
till i float.

---

​Sreeja Naskar is a young poet based in India. Her first poetry collection, Sunflowers and Silhouettes, was published by BriBooks. Her work has appeared in Poems India, Cordite Poetry Review, ONE ART, Ink Sweat and Tears, Crowstep Journal, The Chakkar, Trace Fossils Review, and elsewhere.