Plunged already too deep into the end times, he’s still a
romantic. He brought home a peace lily that yields ardently to
overwatering. I wait for it to flower, waiting beats the spiral.
Grasshoppers predate grass and still haven’t achieved complete metamorphosis, so
no, I don’t believe the man who achieved enlightenment after cleaning up an
oil spill. They burn fresh spills in situ, meaning “original place.” A certain
symmetry to that, yes, didn’t we all come from the ocean? Next to me, he clutches an
image of us like an idol, brushing my glassy face, ridding it of any
signs of the seasons. Under the soft shushing of his fingers, no time has passed.
Nishtha Trivedi (she/her) is a graduate student in English at Brown University. As a queer woman and an immigrant, she writes about fractured identities, fractured languages, and the yearning to write something worth writing home about. She has been previously published in The Marrow, fifth wheel press, and Cathexis Northwest Press.
Serotonin 