We tread in a duckling row. We tiptoe over sewer pits, and bend left at the samosa shops
so as not to coat our feathers in oil. On the TV, you want to watch those
Richard Linklater movies, our answer to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll is tuition fees
and plane tickets, paper fruits of four years’ labour
So that we might become real kids someday.
I don’t know what I’m talking about but I’ll risk
it for America, the only country in a separate orbit
I know if we were there, you would have kissed me by now, and I
would have stopped laughing at your teeth once you began to use them.
Your thighs smiling behind cotton salwar
Come to think of it, I don’t know anything about you either. Perhaps we
will make exceptions of each other too.
Pia Bhatia is a student from New Delhi, India. She currently holds the position of Chief Editor at The Aman Project, and reads for Second Revolution and Polyphony Lit. Her work has been published in Sonder Midwest, The Rubbertop Review, and various other journals and was named the 2019 winner of RIZA Press' Multimedia Art and Poetry Award.
