Kashiana Singh
Cardboard Days

When the serrated sunlight filters
into my window each morning
I scrub myself clean, unbraid
myself from a decayed night and
walk out into my symmetrical days
When my garden releases creatures
back into their desolate tunnels
I whisper songs
of abandonment, erupting
from hissing grasses
from paralyzed summers
When school girls’ step into familiar
chattering of crowds with eyes that
are like zigzag stares; skipping
I pluck a sun-kissed rose, nestled
behind a reticent bush, startling
at how precariously it blooms
When the letterbox opens
to sanitized envelopes
of penciled anger, of molten death
I kneel within the center
of my erased garden
lisping a series of crumpled thanks
while the sky starts to name every
regret, of lives no longer brimming
I see angels’ hover
unmasked
they straddle my screams
on the arches of their wings
I spit my lava, trembling
into the naked earth
a volcano rages
spilling ash
my charred
breast awaits
its last breath