amrita chakraborty

VENEER

my brother says it’s like a veneer hard

and necessary. my brother says it

smiling looking down at the table. imagine for a second

that there is no grief and still the mouth swallow s

the same. god walks through the square a voice in his ear singing

the gita. to tell some truth i don’t know what to be sometimes i

catch my body arched thrown open at the peak of light hungry

for height. others i am a blue room that wants nothing

more than to be inconsequential sinking bowed at the shrine of beauty

and happy even in the absence of deeper feeling. i wish there was

just one season without anxiety in the throat i’ve only ever hated

myself and anything i could not control about me. slick as rain

on the moonlit street peer up through the subway skylight. do

you see a bowstring bereft of an arrow could you eat of an

offering abandoned on the docks. my love, whatever i become

there will be an end to this so mimic the fist while you can

before it disappears and i along with it

this anger won’t take you anywhere good but it will hurt less

than everything else that would.

Amrita Chakraborty is a Bangladeshi-American writer and graduate student at Cornell University. Her work has been published by outlets such as Kajal Magazine, BOAAT and others. She is a blog correspondent with Half Mystic Journal and her microchapbook 'Cold Alchemy' was published by Ghost City Press in 2020. You can read more of her writing at: amritachakraborty.com.