i unsaint myself in front of the mirror
i stopped praying when i realized god was just another man who never looked me in the eye / i started growing basil in my mouth instead / kissed a girl who tasted like wet soil and unfinished apology / we lay under the fig tree and named our bruises after saints we didn’t believe in / thomas on my thigh / cecilia on her clavicle / we did not ask for redemption / we asked for rot / holy decay / the kind of softness that comes after a storm shreds your spine open / she told me she saw a version of heaven where no one flinched at the word wife / where queer bodies bloomed without being asked to explain / i told her i saw god once / in the mouth of a dying bird / all blood and apology / neither of us were saved / we drank tap water thinking it was sacred and broke bread with our bare hands and named it communion / i no longer believe in salvation / just this body / this heat / this ache that spells itself out in moss / in the vines growing from my ribs / i worship in lowercase now / my rituals are all dirty / all alive / all mine.
after they left, the garden wouldn’t bloom / but the weeds did
they said they’d come back / that they just needed time / like a seed needs darkness / like soil needs to forget the shape of a shovel / i waited with my hands in the dirt / bruised fingernails and a mouth full of rosemary prayers / but the lavender turned on me / went brittle overnight / the basil yellowed at the roots / and the cactus—god, the cactus bloomed / one red flower, a wound announcing itself / and i cried because it was the wrong kind of beautiful / they had kissed me here, by the pots / lips tasting like mint tea and unfinished apologies / they said i made them feel soft / like moss / a forgotten language their body remembered / they said it like a sin / i let them plant me / water me / name every inch of me like a gardener naming his dead / then they left / said the sun was too much / the soil was wrong / that i’m not ready to be this seen / i buried their toothbrush under the aloe / every morning the garden reminds me / of the places their hands touched / the spinach refuses to grow where their mouth once was / the marigolds bloom and bloom and bloom / like they don’t know they’re grieving / i eat leaves now / i press them to my skin like scripture / try to root something new inside the hollow / but the tragedy of queer love is / sometimes the ones who understand you best / are the first to leave / and the last to rot.
she left in autumn and everything i’ve planted since has grown teeth
the tomatoes refuse to ripen without her breath in the kitchen / the mint turned bitter the day her toothbrush dried / i told myself i could grow past her / that i could bury the memory like compost / something holy in decay / but every time i dig a hole for something new / i hit the bones of what she left / her hair still wrapped in the roots / her laughter caught in the wind-chime parsley / she kissed me with lips that were thyme and absence / said she loved me like wild things love fire / desperate / doomed / i kept her letters in the freezer, thought cold might preserve goodbye better than heat / the rosemary grew sideways after she left, crooked toward the emptiness / i pruned it and bled / i bled into the soil until the basil grew red-veined / everything in this garden knows her / the vines curl like her wrists / the sunflowers tilt like her head when she lied / i water them anyway / i tell them nothing is wrong / but they bloom too fast / then wilt too soon / like they’re reenacting the part where she said forever and meant tuesday / grief has a scent / it’s damp earth and sour lavender / it’s a hand pulling the roots before the flower opens / it’s the way i still plant things i know won’t live / just to feel something die in my hands that isn’t her.
Sreeja Naskar is a young poet based in India. Her work has appeared in Poems India, Crowstep Journal, ONE ART, Ink Sweat and Tears, FRiGG, The Chakkar, Trace Fossils Review, and elsewhere. When she isn’t writing, she’s watching sad films, talking to her houseplants, or overanalyzing Bon Iver lyrics.