An interconnected family of supernovas burning bright in the night sky: take a moment, reach out—join us.
somewhere far away
Dhwanee Goyal
**content warning: blood mention**
in the dream, i have a brush
for one hand & a pincer for the
other. it’s two am & i am
stalactite in sand, my body
a drought and cutting into the
glinting ground, fashioning itself a
blade from all the carcasses that
lie in its hollow. in the dream,
i have cow-bells for fingers
& a mud-monster for a friend. it’s
two in the afternoon when the
clapper is in my throat already, but
in the dream, where i have seeds
for feet & decay for lungs,
i touch the air around me &
snap it into a wall into glass
into a forest into a door, hands
bronze and plain. in kutch, the
people are made of straw &
have beads in place of eyes,
scabs for skin. they make
portraits of their suffering &
call it art. they hold their
language in their lapel, their
craft at the back of their teeth,
coil their children and their
animals around their fingers.
they speak in depths & i think
that’s where i get it from: the
blood puddles, the litany of
slewed voices (one of my
fifth grade teacher, another of
the stranger who caressed my
brother’s cheek). this is how
we talk: voices a whip on our
cheeks, hair braided with metal
shafts. us, careless children, our
speeches tucked into our armpits,
a blood river in our mouths.
About the Author
Dhwanee Goyal (she/her) is a fifteen-year-old student from Maharashtra, India. Pretty buildings make her heart beat fast, and she likes puns, double-sided blankets, sentences that trail off and… Her work appears or is forthcoming in Claw & Blossom, The Meadow, and Eunoia Review, amongst others. Her twitter handle is @pparallell.