Her shriveled arms twist as easy as cherry stems
tongue-tied by boys’ mouths, hungry
to show off.
Strobe lights flash like silent sirens outside
yet in this dark room
anything goes.
His hands slide down
her ribs, a rollercoaster
the jut of her hip bone, the big drop.
She feels no more beautiful
in his foreign hands
than she does in her mother's –
cradling 3 am breakdowns
with claustrophobic consolation
and the frustration of a fight
no longer being fought.
Squeeze too hard and she’ll break
bone by bone
breath by breath
dissonance devolving into dust
snow powder in the air.
Her hopeless Hail Mary
grasping at zeros on the scale
so fixated on the number
she cannot see herself
dissolving too.
Be Kiran Damodaran.
