Poetry

The third child’s love affair

by Pragya Dhiman

I ate lizard eggs as a child and the wallpaper that turned cream
like the ocean iced and rain water when it kissed my skin in last
summer’s yellow dress
I saved for an occasion no less than that of my
seventeenth birthday
handed down from my sister’s cousin’s friend
because it’s fun to play pretend,
to donate, translate a lazy yawn,
give away your trash to the third world country kid
who never even knew the joy of a functioning tap.

Water here tastes like salt and the soil tastes like
blood but
I still fell in love with the only place
I can play house.
It’s a shame, really, three rooms for
a family of twelve and
sleeping on the bedroom floor
stuffing ears with cotton to ensure
no rodents or cockroaches would make your brain
their home.

Where else can I really go?

I live in a place where we use each other’s
names as insults,
where kids from the south hate kids from the north
where conversations are long
but I just cannot keep these friendships alive
because I keep falling in love
with the idea of the isolation lie.

So I only cry at night when no one can see
poor lonesome me, hungry for a love affair so deep
it will turn knees weak, love pouring
into my mouth, so when I speak
the only words that shall ever leave
will be no less than ancient, epic love poetry
and this tongue belonging to a third world country
will despise, full of dignity, the faces that look at it
with shameless, condescending pity.

Appeared in Issue Fall '22