My dear fairies,
I have been thinking about writing to you for over a month now. But for some reason, I haven’t been able to. This is why I am turning to formlessness – vignettes, instead of a fully-formed narrative. Imagine a girl: in a pink dress and strawberry print cardigan, holding hands with her lover, laughing, drinking tropical-coloured cocktails. Imagine: peach rings on the bedside table, ABBA playing while she showers, the skyline so vibrant from the 9th floor. Imagine: electric eel, penguins, butterflies. Imagine: brunch, iced coffee, french toast, giggles.
This February, I turned twenty-six. It was one of the mellowest birthdays I ever had, not in terms of celebration, but the intensity of it. I felt so loved and pampered. My friends came to my birthday party dressed as fairy princesses and we had edible glitter sprayed on rice krispies that Lexi made and strawberry limeade mocktail that Lola swiftly added tequila to and Shira made chocolate-covered strawberries and Lizzie put flowers in my hair and Nevin did a reading of my chart and Dakota brought bubbles and all I remember is laughter.
I went to Kansas City for AWP, a writers’ conference that has the ability to replenish and exhaust me at the same time. I read my silly little poems at two offsite events, hugged so many writers I admire, wore Theophanies merch to get the book signed (and devoured the book), ate famous KC barbecue, lied on the bed with Josie yapping away, went out for sushi with my friends, had breakfast with my favourite Assamese writers in the US, had a racist encounter, ate overpriced greasy pizza at the airport, talked to old friends and new.
I wrote an essay in the form of a playlist. I cried so many times while writing it. I hugged the person I have been seeing and finally acknowledged how much I like him. I wrote the first and last poems for my thesis manuscript. My roommates and I went through hell. We ate Raising Cane’s for the first time. We went to watch Lisa Frankenstein in the theater and I got free Cinnabon. I thought of the first time R and I ever had Cinnabon. How we were still documenting our firsts.
Some news –
I am writing to you from Rabun Gap in Georgia. I am at the Rock House, the only place on the campus that has wifi. I am on Day 4 of a 2-week residency at The Hambidge Center, and earlier yesterday, I somehow managed to lock myself in my studio but afterwards, one of the housekeepers rescued me and I went on a nice little walk and everything was great again. I might have stopped in the middle of the winding road to look at clouds and cried at how abundant the world is. I have been taking time to do nothing, just stare at the trees and listen to the birds and nap.
As I slip into my pink silk pajamas that my besties gifted me for my birthday and pour myself a glass of Barefoot Strawberry wine and munch on the gluten-free cornbread chef prepared, I ask myself: What is all this for? What is the end? What does it mean for me to be here, truly here? We had dinner with the Director of the Residency on Wednesday and he said the goal of Hambidge was to focus on radical freedom, whatever that meant for the artist. With so many residencies out there prioritising the product, the end goal, it has been such a breather to ruminate on my process and what makes it unique, while devouring fresh sourdough and chewy ginger cookies, listening to the sharpness of the crickets.
Word bank (from my friends):
what type of water am I:
sea/ Avian water/ a delicate stream/ fish/ the water condensation on the outside of an iced coffee cup/ ocean rain river/ waterfall/ morning dew/ pink la croix
Find your poem:
“One Cup of Chai” by Preeti Vangani
If I had known that the cup of chai
my mother asked me, a drifter
in the kitchen, to make her
that afternoon, which I
having blended water and milk
in such strange ratios
that when reduced and strained
the tea came up
to barely one trisection of my pinkie
(that cup was the driest well I saw,
the lowest tide) so to cover my blunder
I poured raw tap water to flood her cup
and fled her room before she could
collect her body, bring lip to saucer,
had I known that the pale, putrid mess
I presented, was after all, the only and
last cup of tea I’d ever make her
would I have suddenly been
granted the culinary wisdom to brew
instead the pot with sprigs of lemongrass,
a pod of cardamom, perhaps even
a prestigious thread of saffron
that I’d sneak from the silver hexagonal box
she kept hidden behind the airtight jars
of pricey nuts, and bring her
a creamy drink of complex caffeine, even
make some magnanimous promise
of offering her tea on tap till she lived
but knowing me, I know I’d have just
continued being the spectacular failure I was
that day, shit-talking my every inability
out of her sight, embarrassed by failure,
afraid of consequence and knowing her,
she would have creased her nose
at first, then continued to descend
on the plate with the hopeful pull
of her slurp, stubborn as she was,
not willing to peg one finite judgement
of adulation or derision—
on the cup she was served
“If You Broke, Just Say That” by DeeSoul Carson
The empire is in my pocket asking to hold $5.
A billion billion years ago, I was a thought riding
in a universe-heavy grain of sand and now Gavin Newsom
is sending me a “You Up?” text on the 15th
of every month. The state wants to know if I’ll fund
its fumblings. I’m to be convinced there’s a gun law
that won’t pass without my two cents. My taxed
income is needed to bomb a nation I can’t find
on any map America drew. If you hold a dollar
to the light, you’ll see the Eagle twist its beak
into a slur. You’ll see the White House laughing
underneath its unlabored breath. A billion years ago,
everything that is wrong with this country
hadn’t happened yet. O, nation of Mammon,
you found God and killed him. We were a miracle
of the universe and now we argue if children deserve
three meals a day. Once, there was a field
in a nameless country waiting for the sky
to break open. There were our names pocketed
in the wet of the Earth. There was a child,
however unmade, waiting for a dark
to sleep through unbothered.
“Shattered Glass Objects” by Bhavya Bhagtani
Once, my heart thumped a beat the size of Jupiter, startling the
sea into a tsunami. I was the only person awake which meant I
could be anything I wanted to be. I became a bird and pricked the
sky open with my beak. The bruise oozed into a flurry of
flamingo hues. I wanted to witness it only with you. You were
eating a macaron on the moon the first time that I saw you. The
memory expands around me like a bubble. I exhale from my
mouth to pop it. It leaves my throat clogged like a soapy drain.
Crying is an extension of language. It keeps raining in my room.
It keeps raining at the beach. Both rains are different. As if the
room and the beach are separate countries. Your car was a
country where we were the only citizens. We were also the
government so we could choose what songs played on the stereo.
We played the same song twenty-seven times. Your memory
nibbles at my heart like a pensive rat. My heart is a punctured
organ and no matter how hard I try to tape it back, no beat
becomes music. Your grip on the steering wheel was sturdy yet
gentle, as if you were holding a glass object. A single sudden brake
could have shattered the universe that we had built inside from
scratch. We were bad mechanics with worn out tools too
stubborn to accept our cluelessness. Unrequited hope is crueller
than unrequited love. We knew exactly how to make each other
laugh. That was the biggest problem. Your laughter is tucked
between my lungs like flowers in a book. Thunder refuses
to rumble you away. My sobs arrive small, like commas, sometimes
sprawling into wails. I call them ellipsis. You left in April. That
evening, there was a downpour. You looked like you were
standing on the other side of a foggy window. That is what falling
out of love looks like. Nobody knows what the end of a poem
looks like. Time is an expanse of your absence. It is a field where I
stand like a helpless scarecrow trying to tell the birds terrifying
them was not my idea. I have stopped calling April eleven other
names. On my way to the beach, I cover your memory with a
raincoat. The raincoat has flowers on it. Memory stays safe but
the flowers get drenched. I hang them on the clothesline next to
your name. I watch your absence sunbathe. I run around
memory’s maze like a crazy circus clown. In the tug of war
between love and geography, the latter always wins. I press an
abandoned clam against my wrist; wait till it becomes heavy with
the weight of my pulse. Bury it under sand like a seed. By April, it
will grow into a plant full of flowers that will know all the right
ways to love. I will name her Hope. I collide into the horizon.
“Glass for Breakfast” by Nur Turkmani
God make our rage count for something.
The apple tree. The grapevine wrapping itself
around the trunk, how it can’t let go.
Every day someone tells me to leave—
‘Beirut is next.’
Did I hear correctly. Do you see what we see.
Don’t tell me Lebanon. Don’t tell me Palestine.
In Baalbeck the orchards have yellowed.
The apples plopping like stones.
No money to water our lands, the farmer says.
We hate our guilt. We love the same journalists.
Wish they knew. Wish they didn’t have to.
When we gather we still light candles.
It will not be the last time.
The jar of raspberry jam breaks onto the floor,
and I dream you ate glass for breakfast,
but I can’t listen. My hair shreds like paper.
Rim Banna was alive. She sang of butterflies and night.
I chop more beetroot. No ceasefire.
25,000 killed in Gaza.
I wake up to check the numbers.
How dare the little wind put me to sleep.
My soup hardens into clumps.
I walk past the Mediterranean Sea,
then back home. These are not my feet.
I oil my hair in rosemary.
I open the windows. Who isn’t sick.
Everything looks like blood.
All those eyes watching. My despair. My hunger.
My coffee spills over the counter.
“Don’t Make Me” by Elizabeth Metzger
When I told you the crab on the beach was dead you asked me what's
dead
I said This is his shell
but you must have heard soul
a yearlong misunderstanding
a summer later unable to sleep you said No,
you told me the body's the part that goes,
the soul stays. And I said No,
you have it backwards, the shell stays
and becomes the beach again. I waited for you to ask after the soul,
where the crab goes. Practiced in my head an inconsolable hour
I don't know or No-
where, scraping my mortal voice like bright meat
when suddenly you shot up from the covers
done crying. So
the going is forever?
Other recommendations:
Currently reading – How to Wrestle a Girl by Venita Blackburn
My favourite from the collection here: Smoothies
Song to cry to
A short story I loved recently – Recreational Dissociation
Rain, warm bread, and long walks,
Shlagha <3
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