"Untitled" by Prachi Valechha
Laurel by Annie Cao
I.
Red, like small animals: the color of the world
that day his huntsmen tore you to pieces, profuse
in the way it limned each fragment of summer. Laurel, I tried
to barter for pieces of you — hip bone, clavicle,
the limbs of an oak tree — but it was too late. They left nothing
but the smell of your blood, which I dream of
too often, now: your wrist like a dorsal fin tracing wetly
against my forehead, eyelids bathing in dollops of sunlight.
Your skin verdant between my fingertips. The forest
breathing hymnal.
II.
I should’ve known better than to go looking
for you. These days you’ve been a scar tingling
in the crevice of my mind, a space where I hide
dead flowers and garlic cloves uneaten. Some nights
I dream you come running back home:
my daughter summer-eyed and aglow,
manifesting in dahlia bulbs or a field of rice
or the river delta casting debris outward.
You told me the forest would reclaim all
that once belonged to it.
But I wake up to a season already empty
of you: the body of pockmarked land swept clean
after the hurricane, as if you’d never been there at all.
III.
The forest is heaving inside my chest
like the body of an unholy bird: something
for the vultures to pick apart and redeem. Now the winter sky
is shedding skin and I think I see you,
Laurel, as I wake up rubbing ash from my cheekbones,
rain like cast-iron collecting in the palm of my hand.
You told me the forest would reclaim
all that once belonged to it. And so I search for you
everywhere, now: in the porcelain belly
of a whitetailed deer, a bead of rainwater gathering
at the tip of my nose, my child song-heavy
and shuddering into light. Someday when it is spring again
I’ll draw you out from the frozen earth. We’ll go to the river
and slip quietly beneath its surface --
I’ll press you against my cheek, warm and woundless
like a new harvest, the girl only half gone.
Red, like small animals: the color of the world
that day his huntsmen tore you to pieces, profuse
in the way it limned each fragment of summer. Laurel, I tried
to barter for pieces of you — hip bone, clavicle,
the limbs of an oak tree — but it was too late. They left nothing
but the smell of your blood, which I dream of
too often, now: your wrist like a dorsal fin tracing wetly
against my forehead, eyelids bathing in dollops of sunlight.
Your skin verdant between my fingertips. The forest
breathing hymnal.
II.
I should’ve known better than to go looking
for you. These days you’ve been a scar tingling
in the crevice of my mind, a space where I hide
dead flowers and garlic cloves uneaten. Some nights
I dream you come running back home:
my daughter summer-eyed and aglow,
manifesting in dahlia bulbs or a field of rice
or the river delta casting debris outward.
You told me the forest would reclaim all
that once belonged to it.
But I wake up to a season already empty
of you: the body of pockmarked land swept clean
after the hurricane, as if you’d never been there at all.
III.
The forest is heaving inside my chest
like the body of an unholy bird: something
for the vultures to pick apart and redeem. Now the winter sky
is shedding skin and I think I see you,
Laurel, as I wake up rubbing ash from my cheekbones,
rain like cast-iron collecting in the palm of my hand.
You told me the forest would reclaim
all that once belonged to it. And so I search for you
everywhere, now: in the porcelain belly
of a whitetailed deer, a bead of rainwater gathering
at the tip of my nose, my child song-heavy
and shuddering into light. Someday when it is spring again
I’ll draw you out from the frozen earth. We’ll go to the river
and slip quietly beneath its surface --
I’ll press you against my cheek, warm and woundless
like a new harvest, the girl only half gone.
Annie Cao is a writer from Colorado. Her work appears in the Kenyon Review, Hunger Mountain, and the Apprentice Writer, and she has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of the UK, and Columbia College Chicago, among others.
Prachi Valechha is a freelance cartoonist and animator from India. Valechha loves to make Toons and Toons for Tunes.
You can find more of their work at: instagram.com/rainbowteeth
You can find more of their work at: instagram.com/rainbowteeth
