Deepthi Arun Kumar
I forgot my phone in the toilet
I won every argument
I’ve ever argued.
Forgave my brutal ex
yet again.
Justified my own cruelty.
Read the body wash ingredients
like scripture.
Cut myself shaving and
wrote the shopping list in blood.
Meal prepped for the apocalypse.
Budgeted for a war.
Poured shampoo on the floor.
It needed love too.
Counted my fallen hair.
Smudged a wall portrait with it
while the conditioner did its thing.
Invented new excuses
to dodge working out
and screamed at my reflection:
I am not beautiful,
but perfect.
Lit a candle.
Waved goodbye.
Called for Siri.
Time to get back to living.
Lunch Menu of Pathologies
Rice water stools,
pea soup diarrhea,
nutmeg liver,
anchovy sauce pus,
with
port wine stains,
a strawberry cervix,
and chocolate cysts
for dessert.
We admit,
doctors are gross,
inventive but disgusting.
We’d have it no other way.
We giggle post-lecture,
no time to sit,
slurping ramen from a styrofoam cup
and unwrapping a chocolate bar.
Next case
starts in ten minutes.
I drank blood at the dinner table
Today’s family dinner
I drank blood
from biting my tongue so damn hard.
Sympathetic looks from
my mother, who thinks I’m a mess,
my father, who thinks it’s a phase,
my brother, who thinks it’s hilarious.
The rotis glare.
Egg curry simmers in the pot.
I tasted only iron, shame,
something sticky between
laughter, tears, panic.
I swallow like a good girl,
reach for more
as if nothing happened,
as if my tongue hasn’t declared war
on my taste buds,
and my eyes weren’t trying to
escape their sockets.
By dessert
I am a war hero of silence,
killed before action,
a martyr of self-inflicted wounds.
Nobody claps.
See y’all next Friday.
Deepthi Arun Kumar is a radiologist who reads scans by day and overthinks metaphors by night, with mixed results. She is often found arguing with her toddler or abandoning her coffee mid-sip. Her poems are forthcoming in Beyond Words.
Instagram: @deepthiarunkumar
LinkedIn: Deepthi Arun Kumar
Featured photo by Gustavo Fring (Pexels)
