Art by Dmitri Danish
The Vocabulary of being
Making love to a new city tastes like olives soaked in vinegar like pronouncing my own name with a stutter.
every morning when i stretch my arms across the glistening sky my armpits reek of god
and i bleed warm salt into the ocean
till it separates the continents into half.
there are days when the air breathes right through me whispering wedding vows in my mother tongue
reminding me of wet mosaic cotton scarves
beading tapestries under the sun
i always thought that home was thick as a jam,
full of cantaloupe coloured marmalade staining my mouth
but its thin as riverwater, ready to fall into
the sea, seeping into me through the kitchen taps.
Kashvi Chandok is a literature student from New Delhi, India. She loves coffee, books and rainy conversations on anything kafkaesque. You can find more of her work here: https://linktr.ee/KashviChandok