Fable
by Shakthi Shrima
You wake up and the woman is gone. You wake up
and the woman is on her hands and knees, keening
Do you know where my eyes are? I can’t find them. You look
and look. The expanse above her nose naked,
fig-purple. You wake up and take your hands off
one by one. Every time you have hurt someone
you imagined hurting yourself, first. You called it praying.
You wake up screaming for your mother. She unhinges
your bedroom door, lifts it with a single hand, takes it, leaves. You wake up
in the canned food aisle of a Safeway and all the cashiers get on their hands
and knees, say look at me, I’m in love with you, I want to look at you
forever. Their faces ballooning blacker and blacker. You wake up
and the woman is in your bed with no sheets. She does not speak.
You cannot touch her. You cannot wake up. Your insides sleeping
like pulp. This, the quietest violence. You open your mouth
as wide as it will go. You open it like you will never die.
and the woman is on her hands and knees, keening
Do you know where my eyes are? I can’t find them. You look
and look. The expanse above her nose naked,
fig-purple. You wake up and take your hands off
one by one. Every time you have hurt someone
you imagined hurting yourself, first. You called it praying.
You wake up screaming for your mother. She unhinges
your bedroom door, lifts it with a single hand, takes it, leaves. You wake up
in the canned food aisle of a Safeway and all the cashiers get on their hands
and knees, say look at me, I’m in love with you, I want to look at you
forever. Their faces ballooning blacker and blacker. You wake up
and the woman is in your bed with no sheets. She does not speak.
You cannot touch her. You cannot wake up. Your insides sleeping
like pulp. This, the quietest violence. You open your mouth
as wide as it will go. You open it like you will never die.
Shakthi Shrima’s work appears or is forthcoming in the Berkeley Poetry Review, the James Franco Review and Hobart, amongst others, and has been recognized by the YoungArts Foundation and the Poetry Society. Shakthi Shrima appears or is forthcoming in her unmade bed. She is the Literary Director at Winter Tangerine, and is presently a student at Princeton University.