i must, however, write

i must, however, write

SARU POTTURI

these keys, those keys, press into the hardened flesh of my fingers, rough from metal string and aching from nails bitten right down to the skin bird-like nubs deformed like babies set in baskets down the stream. but here’s a eulogy, as mama cries and pa pretends to grieve: you were meant for something greater, karna, moses of the seas. and karma’s got her vice-like grip upon my toes: my kafka on the shore; and all my lines and squiggles might be just that: glorified remnants of worlds that i’m no longer privy to. i prithee, let me birth you, half-formed baby splitting my skull; i’m not your home. i’m not your home, you overgrown child, like a canopy growing in me, rumbling my intestines to make room. and this, and this is why they sent their basket case down the stream: for fear and knowledge that if not you would never leave. my fingers are itching to cast you out; i’m witch as can be, stirring at cauldron and stewing in my resentment. these keys, those keys nothing’s enough for you, nothing’s good enough, nothing’s good. perhaps it is i who will not let you go i who keeps you in: for fear and knowledge that when sent out to the world, you will return unrecognizable or perhaps not at all. that’s what it means to be a parent, to know the kind of hell-scape you’re bringing that ball of skin and bone and brain into. but if i give you wings, will you mold into icarus? my fingers twitch at the thought, ever so slightly, stuttering upon the keys, and making a sound most unpianoesque. it’s

a burlesque of sorts, the water-damaged wood jeering at technicolor screen: oh, i’m glitching, i’m glitching. these keys, those keys, endeavor to push you out, ghost possessing me, apparition playing my grotesque fingers like puppets on strings, hardened from string; if i bring my own hands up to my face and build monuments from rods and cones, will you leave? who will i be when you’re gone? will i be empty? are you the very intestines i thought you pushed around like a toddler does toy trains? a double suicide; make that double, please. if i die, will my words write me a eulogy, or will they suss me out, cuss me out leave my bones to rot? it’s karma at its finest. strings are bars and so are lines: still, however, i must write.