Rejection Letter to All That Potential
by Gayatri Rajan
Never a quiet girl. Never willing to memorize appropriate
maps. Wore hysteria like a cloak, wrote grocery lists
at parties. They wanted a catfish of a girl, silent cutout
to match the futures they wrote. I didn’t look like myself
in the dark: I let my body turn Technicolor, pressed dead
languages into my eyes, a shadow of a girl. Crying,
I crumpled to the ground, and the stars
fell too. When I promised my future to them,
I murmured, my tongue sliced, emptied
of nerves. Perhaps infinity is a girl
in the dark. Perhaps love is a ripped
Polaroid. Away from the plans,
the perfect, the potential, I am the silent one,
the world swirls around me, revealing–
a girl, a humming field, love song unwritten.
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