By Akshita Krishnan

amma braids my acrid, rotting esh with jasmine, and feeds me persimmons & mangoes & nectarines. her wrought hands crush my fingers and sink into me like my dog’s teeth as we make chapathi for the first time. she plaits plush silk until the skin between my back and hips, the vertebrae, do not touch. i feel her paint overlay my body, slowly peeling into ivory. 

somewhere, across the Atlantic, i hang a garland over her portrait and chop onions like the lines following the are of ribs: someone mistakes her legacy for mine. 

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Akshita Krishnan is a South Indian writer whose works have appeared/are forthcoming in Eunoia, Atlas and Alice, & Girls Right the World. You can nd her at akrishnan.carrd.co.