This side of my skin is pallid,
torn with blueberry fingernails
and the April air reeks of saltines and crisp linen
that mimics your shape,
the cartomancer spits prophecies that sting
like sanguine lipstick smears;
I don’t know whose warm daggers carve
a polygraph between the spaces of my clavicle
while I scrutinize your lips—flamingos in late July,
citrus still sours our breaths.

The hymns of cicadas are slaughtered now,
lavenders have mutated into soot,
counting crows is one of my hobbies too;
your calloused knuckles still burn like
gunpowder as you dim the frame
for fireworks in November skies.

Before I know it,
cinnamon billows through my foyer—the ravens
are building incarnadine frostmen;
postcards curl in cerulean corduroys—whose?
and December peels away like tangerines in my backyard.

Spring creeps in, blue-knuckled, burning on my tongue
like underripe strawberries,
cloaked in the shade of your pupils;
my throat tastes of crocuses and chardonnay—it’s too early
for this, too early for you to leave.

It’s summer again
I have spent cartridges on my bedpost
and sunburn on my carmine toes,
someone planted fireweed beneath my lemon tree;
your knobbly knees are still tainted with glitter
as you slam the shutter hastily
while I’m still here, waiting at the traffic signal stuck at yellow.
I swear you were real.
I swear—you were real?

---

Devanshee Soni is a student majoring in business management and loves to read and write. She lives in India with her family. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Rumen, Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine, The Hyperbolic Review, The Brussels Review, and Clockwise cat. You can also find her on substack @bydevanshee