Heatwave Poem

Spring came like something running. I keep sleeping on my hands, the indents of this skin like stencils. Say I wanted truths. A tight band around my head. Timed ache. Cut aspirin and honey. Back then it was enough just to see the world through my body. A cat’s paws straying on the glass. You alive and out on the lawn. My pencilled arithmetic, open throat. The heat was unbearable, and so I wanted to become it. My sorrow hitting the ditch light. The night - against everything. There was a dead fountain we used our limbs to climb, pigeons sniffling in the gaps. Every lamp blurring and beheld. The game we invent of touch. The back of my knee a mausoleum of sweat. You, running flat through the chapel while I give chase. I have this memory of drowning.

Anoushka Kumar (she/her) is a student and writer from India. Her work appears in Poetry Northwest, Vagabond City Lit, and elsewhere. She also currently serves as a reader for Palette Poetry. She likes dragonfruit, wood-panelled flooring and Phoebe Bridgers.