Rhea Gupte

Chapter One

She lived in a yellow cube. With every passing day, the measured symmetry of each windowless wall swallowed her. 

We are made up
Of water, mostly

Within us
we hold,
memories
of the sea.

From the time
we were
stranger
mammals.

Our bodies need sodium
Still
The water we drink
washes it ashore.

Let’s go salt licking
Like our ocean cousins,

Wipe each others tears away
till the edges of the sea.

Remember how we floated
in wombs
Trying to reach the waves.

Trying to be free.

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Today it rained.

Water poured from your lungs
And your abdomen

Your organs were drowning.

Now they are little boats
Rescuing your heart

Veiny life jackets in tow.

pulled, burned,
blurred, bleached

Shame appears
under arms
between legs
via scrutiny.

Shame is passed
in inheritance
as a blanket
of insecurity.

Shame is taught
as convenience
lest we unlearn
our carefully
fed entirety.

Grandmother’s spine shrunk
fighting the weight
of the patriarchy
she bore all her life.

Mother’s curved to the side.

If mine stays intact
it glows from
and owes to
their backs.

Not a single shoe has bitten me in years.
Not a belt, strap, snap pinches my skin too tight.
Nothing leaves marks on my body.
I am not a canvas
for what I wear
to scratch and dent.
In my clothes I choose to breathe.
But for a world I dream
where we may all say
no tear has been shed,
no backs broken,
no hands overworked,
no payment stolen,
no freedom usurped,
in the making of anything that lives on me.

When work travels away from the recesses of a studio or a camera, onto somebody else’s sanctuary, a screen, another country, onto sterile white walls, it ceases to be what it meant and becomes a part of what it may mean to the one experiencing it. We as artists work on honing our minds, make a feeble attempt to have a voice, express it in a way that it fills up with what we want to say, all along knowing impermanence and obscurity. Art can be intimidating, words may lose meaning as they get longer. Do concepts which need pages and pages to be understood close more doors than they open? Expression is understanding oneself, understanding the role of oneself within the systems at play.

Burning fires, rabid power, stomachs growling hunger. Deaths on deaths. Not enough beds. Existences lost, lives mocked, deaths mocked further. Crowds, talons, beaks, clawing, chewing, bleak. Where is the money going? Where did the money go? Wake up, sleep, repeat. Mouths shut, heads down, walk in line, all is fine. Lock up those who talk, sink those who think. Be led, don’t lead, shut up if you bleed. Greed, breed greed. Grieve, unbeating hearts, grieve. Pulling triggers, metaphorical, corporeal, carceral. Screaming we don’t discriminate, screaming don’t hate. Don’t ask, don’t take us to task, lick our boots and fix our flasks. We’ll fix the news on your stands. Watch as we take your soil, govern your toil. Into eroding hands. More online shams. Where are our rights going? Where did our rights go? Sold for statues and promises to grow.

Hanging on to withered old shirts, memories of our memories, what conversations felt like, what we felt like in those conversations. How our skin felt pressed against cold railings, how evening walks felt in the park, dreaming up hopes and journeys to the stars. How startling the water felt as we dived in the rain, how rusty swings creaked in pain, under our weight, how droplets clung to our tiny bodies shivering for refuge. How we enjoyed the wind, the sun, the cold, the words, the scars. Still on both knees, from stumbling in between, gutters and roads made of tar. Picking up earthworms to put them in jars. Only to be freed by the roots of our rose plants. The same soil where we buried a bird who fell apart. Holding hands in its receding warmth. Making promises to each other’s tears and hearts. 

How is your heart? How are you navigating this life? This time? Strange. Frightening. Unpredictable.

We sit behind laptop screens and scroll through feeds, reading about more deaths, charting stats of insufficient beds. The world we live in has always had problems, always had people suffering. This one puts everybody in rooms with doors locked and windows shut. Some of the suffering do not have windows or doors. They walk on foot.