sandhya 💫

ALT I fish for my hands on weekends, baiting hooks with heirloom rings because even metal remembers more than me. See: every bullet recalls its gun. Every body is birthed from crime. I list my sins on receipts that sink into water, released into salt. One: the number of mouths. Two: every exit I stole, every mile I spent. Three: the middle school field trip where I spent five dollars to press pennies into presidents. How when I fisted the coins, my palms burned with the faces of dead men. How I tried to smooth copper back into currency, but it was branded with a history that was barely mine. Now, I reel in knives, all my family’s quiet wounds. I cast my ghosts into sails. Leash them to my oars so they can knuckle me to sea, every gust a breath. Noon rots into night, and I snare pocket watches on my hooks, winding their clocks to morning so I can watch years