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For When I Love You Without Loving You

Aditi Marshan

You tell me not to fold your culture because you think I cannot hold my culture in these bleached hands.

You pull the chilies from my mouth because you think I cannot learn to host your fire in my body.

You tie down my tongue when it flaps the wrong way because you think it cannot make the right sounds.

But here you are now adorning me with jewels

from your grandmother’s mother

patterning my palms with deep brown history

draping and pleating and tucking till every inch of masquerading skin is hidden, safely, away.

Tell me how I can be of you and be the embodiment of what broke you

tell me how I can love you to destruction while loving the ruins they left us in

tell me how my skin is made of the earth of my home, but how the inside is washed bare.



Art by Khushi Agarwal

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