Anabranch (after Lyn Hejinian) Aarushi Prasad
The darker the henna, the stronger the bond with your future husband they said, so I vigorously rubbed my palms with diluted lemon juice
and cinnamon. The neighbour's younger one had to share her Barbies
and she wasn’t pleased about it. As soon as my kite was cut, I sprinted
across roofs, across baskets of dried chilis and mangled wires to collect it. While the watermelon had white and black seeds, the guava had pink ones. My oesophagus flooded with the fermented alcohol disguised as
hydrochloric acid. The incessant stream of traffic on the road bridges the gap between the bourgeois and the bourgeoisie. We The People. She
shook her umbrella and droplets of water fell on the floor. I was forbidden from going to the sea when the tide was high even though the aroma of spices and clarified butter whirled throughout the apartment. Where do
dreams birth themselves? We did not have a maid’s quarter so her groans became a lullaby. “Think outside my box” rallied swaths of people, as a
blindfolded woman with a scale in her hand stared intently at them. Don’t let history retweet itself. The french fries and chicken tenders became
soggy in the trunk of the car. Sylvia shuts her eyes and all the world drops dead. The sumac stuck stubbornly in the crevice between my canines. Give this notebook to my mother when you go to my native land for
your honeymoon. It was so romantic that I was frightened to press fast forward. Who are we if not the stories we tell ourselves.
The washing machine whirred and she sat above it reading Little House on the Prairie. The zebra crossing hypnotised her so she stood still and aimless. Celery stems made the broth bitter and Papa twitched as he
took the first sip, followed by the second. Although she was beautiful, she
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