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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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It's 6:10 PM Same as yesterday I'm by the counter Broken bowls at my feet Watching you cook dinner for two By the same carbon monoxide oven again Chopping vegetables Against gutted, bloated wood
Nipping your fingertips again I'm watching it all stir "You've got to stay this time Only a couple more minutes till dinner" And I play my part in our rehearsed routine A delicate apology and exit stage left You cut the heat Hear the hissing kettle smother itself Your crockery hitches a ride to the checkered floor again Same as yesterday Shattering over and over But atleast it lets your hands stay busy Always busy cleaning up yesterdays To sustain proof of company Keeping the remnants a little longer The last image of noise and chatter Etched into shards of dinner plates It's 8:05 PM Same as yesterday You've decided to make yourself a bowl of cereal again And you think it should be different by now You should've learnt the little things All these hours, days, weeks You'd have used the dishwasher Read all the recipe books At least fed yourself warm toast But you're still here, picking up what's left from dinner last night Your sadness is profound and all consuming It built the house you live in It's dirty and messy and foul Apple peels that form into manure It grew the flowers in your garden The ones you use on occasion To garnish food you never eat You're ravenous and hungry and starving deep down But you deny yourself a meal again Because your hunger keeps you housed You deny yourself a meal again So you can cook for another, some day It's 7:42 PM Same as yesterday You're hunched over the oven clock Back arched while you watch the rods go red hot Taking another drag Brewing a recipe for cancer in your lungs "Stay for dinner this night" you say again And I say no, hoping it'll be different this time Nico Sharma is an 18-year-old from Jaipur, India and has previously been featured in en*gendered lit mag. Stuck in the perpetual flux of body, identity and being, they also maintain a diary of projects at linktr.ee/modernconcussion. Comments are closed.
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* = Editors' Choice work
Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
March 2024
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