God
I fear I am breeding
worms in the marrows
of my brain.
Shoot me through a
single whorl of thread &
I will shear it like a
sting-ray.
God I do want
to be small—
but not in this way.
Like dew-drops frothing
in a snowball’s blaze. Im-
permeable to the very cold
that rips their seams.
I want to shriek myself alive.
I want to be
left alone.
All day—
I split the sun’s cankerous light
to find even a
toe-nail of your orb.
Anything that will
keel me open
into living.
On both my arms,
charred wall-wafers
crackle like spider-light. Of
a house I have been jack-knifed
from,
penniless.
God I want this house again.
Button me up.
Hurl me into
the breasts of meadow-grass.
Gift me the fawn of my childhood.
Let me love them more than ever
before.
–
Trivarna Hariharan is a writer and pianist based in India. She has studied English literature at Delhi University and the University of Cambridge. A Pushcart Prize and Orison Anthology nominee, her recent poems have been published in Duende, Entropy, Stirring, Atticus Review, Counterclock, Rogue Agent, The Shore, and others.