Mandira Pattnaik

26

Twenty six months in your
student life, you grew tendrils on your limbs,
clutched the line crawling by microspaces for mill workers,
and took the 6:05 back, gnawing

Grill windows, and smudged soot.
Bodies crammed, wilderness running
through, perpetually
craving for your portion of the sky,
a commuter
wedded to the local.

Twenty six days in a caged steel and glass cubicle were
enough. Among polite conversations,
predators had you marked, and you knew that.
Prowling behind, eyes that soaked you up dry, gasping for water, deep
inside parched earth, you were
dying roots.

Twenty six alphabets to connect the dots,
tied up in troubled words, you pounded their
meanings into something to chew—
softened pulp on extracted paper, then
restoring those to factory settings
like humble humus to earth
let dandelions grow on your lips.

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Mandira Pattnaik's recent poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Prime Number Magazine, West Trestle, Variant Lit, Feral Poetry, Kissing Dynamite and Eclectica Magazine. Find her on Twitter @MandiraPattnaik