issue five / mosaic
small odyssey as erasure
Ananya Kharat
I.
It starts with the creation myth: my mother’s womb. Everything that follows is luck. I was
newfound & pink-skinned & nothing more than her exhale, the sienna glint in the
corner of her right eye. Every year shed in the sunroom stuck to the wallpaper like ghosts of
replay. Back then, I drank lighter fluid & lit up on the balcony & she screamed she did. Said I
was a bad omen. Said I shouldn’t hang around those Russian nesting dolls I called my friends.
How they opened up & swallowed me, took all my small miseries into themselves. Spun
them into silver linings & pipe dreams. & I am secretly hope on hope on hope.
We were masquerading our decay as ill-timed humor when we got to the crossroads & grieved
every cool summer for the rest of our lives. Said our goodbyes. One, east. Two, south. I, west. &
the story crumbled like golden sandcastles melting past my rouge-flushed palms.
It starts with the creation myth: my mother’s womb. Everything that follows is luck. I was
newfound & pink-skinned & nothing more than her exhale, the sienna glint in the
corner of her right eye. Every year shed in the sunroom stuck to the wallpaper like ghosts of
replay. Back then, I drank lighter fluid & lit up on the balcony & she screamed she did. Said I
was a bad omen. Said I shouldn’t hang around those Russian nesting dolls I called my friends.
How they opened up & swallowed me, took all my small miseries into themselves. Spun
them into silver linings & pipe dreams. & I am secretly hope on hope on hope.
We were masquerading our decay as ill-timed humor when we got to the crossroads & grieved
every cool summer for the rest of our lives. Said our goodbyes. One, east. Two, south. I, west. &
the story crumbled like golden sandcastles melting past my rouge-flushed palms.
Ananya Kharat is a writer based in the Chicagoland area, where she spends her days on LetterBoxd and at the local library. She is a general editor for The Empty Inkwell Review, and you can find her work in its premier issue as well as in Frighten the Horses. You can find her on Instagram at @ananyakharatt.