WANT POEM
You’re standing beside the lowly prettyboy and
you won’t admit it but he disgusts you.
You hold his dirty hand and run.
It’s raining
and you’re running,
hand in hand with something disgusting.
Your hands are wet and sticky
but they’re also warm
and touched
and held
and you are stuck because
you can’t run away from wanting your hands to be held,
so you run away from the part of yourself that is repelled by the boy standing beside you.
He doesn’t speak your language.
You refuse to speak his.
And he thinks you’re God
because you don’t speak his language
like your God doesn’t speak yours.
You kiss him and he pulls out a lyre–
starts to dance and play, mindless
songs falling off his tongue like pearls.
You look at him and think:
maybe you’ll spare him another touch
if he looks too pretty to let go. someday. maybe.
You feel his hand twitch in yours and you wonder
how lovely it would be to ruin him– to have
tears run down his big wet eyes because he loves you.
You feel his hand twitch in yours
and you wonder what you’ve become.
Your word and his movement.
You want your name between his teeth
staining the lips of every girl he kisses.
You want it so– he can fuck anyone
but it’s your hand that he’ll search for whenever it rains.
Aditi Kashyap, 18, Punjab - India ✯ IG: @adiitikashyap ✯ adiiti.kashyap@gmail.com
“Aditi Kashyap is a writer from Punjab, India. She believes that no two things are the same, no matter how similar they may seem. She also loves contradictions. Her work has previously appeared in Daughter magazine and in her university's newsroom.”