Dhwanee Goyal

Poem as Grief

In eighth grade, there are so many mistakes
already. You turn to your friend and ask her
what your favorite book is, because you forgot
and she knows the answer. She will always

know the answer. It's been five years since then
and nothing’s changed—the guard tower of
your mind, still and empty. There’s no time to
judge how long until your hands are not your

hands any longer. When mind isn’t mind
anymore. When your mind is a boat. Planks
rearing the sea, rows whittling through the
fish below. There’s a pause in which

no bloodthirst exists—then the birds attack.
You’re in your favorite cafe now, and have been
for decades, disintegrating. Each tile in the wall
has a memory stronger than your own. After

breakfast, the two snakes in your stomach are
nameless, ravenous. You take them to
the very end of Marine Drive, slam them
against the rocks until it seems like the sea has

rained upon itself a hundred times over. In school,
you learn about cold-blooded animals, and
your teacher is shouting at you to stop reading
a damn novel in my class, and you still can’t

remember the name of your favorite book.
Every day is spent tossing on the cliffside
of your bed. There’s excessive drinking,
if only for the want of something to do.

See, how you’ve made a home of your body and
yourself. Will yourself into remembering the
texture of a hand. The shape of an eye, how
her skin feels. All this and more burning in the

pyre, bathed down the Ganges under the current
of millions of people. Come back—it’s okay to
not know your own name.

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Dhwanee Goyal (she/they) is a sixteen-year-old student from Maharashtra, India. An editor-in-chief of Indigo Literary Journal, their work appears or is forthcoming in Claw & Blossom, Whale Road Review, Heavy Feather Review and more. Their Twitter handle is @pparallell, and their micro-chapbook, Kasauli Daydreams, is out from Ghost City Press. She is an Adroit 2021 mentee, and an alumna of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio.