While you try to sing underwater, I make myself the unkeepable
promise: we will wake to the war’s end, knowing what happened.
You hold up your face, a plastic almost citizen. I run a lip of land
to be taken in by ocean, love women who reach down to touch
the slick crown of hair emerging— stench all seaweed, gunshot,
sulphured egg. You are chosen because they thought you clean,
expedited. Lucid with plankton, I submerge beneath the gibbous
moon, rind held tight to teeth. You get used to breathing like this.
K. Hari is a physician and poet of Tamil descent, who is interested in exploring ideas of embodied heritage, hurt, and healing in her work. Her poetry can be found in publications such as The Plentitudes, The Margins, Kartika Review, and The Brooklyn Review, among others. She was a finalist for the Kundiman Prize and Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. She is currently an MFA candidate at New York University and a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. She resides in Queens, New York.
