Suman Chhabra
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one apple can feed a hundred
And I think maybe, I’ve done wrong. Done him wrong. Lied in a way that wasn’t blatant. Wore a white fabric around me, was pocketed in holes. Could see patches of leg uncovered, an arm, a wrist, the body between stomach and breasts. Why don’t I just say how much I own and how much I do not? It’s a tilling of the soil over my head to make beautiful what others see. So my box of marigolds sits nicely next to theirs. Meanwhile I’m wondering where the marigolds’ roots are. Tapping and pulling tight together from each of body’s corners until body is thin as a rubber band rolled around itself, double strand of DNA. I pluck it myself, even if I say you do, I pluck body twang twang and feel the zizzes and zzeeezs vibrate through my shoulder bones and teeth. I pluck it hard enough like the tissue box guitars of elementary school, to be heard, to be known that I created. I’m lying, yes to him, about how I survive. What are the particulars of my life. Till now I’ve given all watercolor washes, dazzled him in orange seeping from green, dripping to and around the bottom of the page. The white spots left dry are home. The old home with order. The old home with order where I wasn’t in charge of credit score maintenance, social status maintenance, the what happens after murder maintenance. A wrench and he lays the shackles on a towel on the floor. He’ll oil each curve and lock so they shine and slip from his hands landing dud. I only say, it smells like olive oil in here. You’re under a canopy of trees, he says, how are you supposed to feel, and continues to bathe each ______ and ______ until I stand in front of him, tip my head so my hair dangles upside down and he rubs the remnants of the oil into my scalp. I sigh. I don’t sit down. I sigh.
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Suman Chhabra is a multigenre writer and cellist. She is the author of Demons Off, a chapbook through Meekling Press. Chhabra is a Kundiman Fellow. She teaches courses in Reading and Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.