Afterbirth

Anoushka Kumar

Second child is branded daughter. Vulvae coated in gothic
fluids and brine dressing her skull. Nimble, an infant’s sinuses
reach out and tilt the sun into her gums. Spittle, retching

bulging, spooled from resin; fangs grasping at a fallen
pinecone. A nurse with bruised eyelids swabs moon-shadow
underneath her molars. White-swathed uniform, lime

bowler hat. Stethoscope unravelling from moleskin. A study
adapts the role of furnace, breeding brethren into starlight.
I was born teething on betel leaf, immolating scuffed

sneaker- soles on turf. Child of industrialism, sipping lighter
fluid out of a dentist’s day cup. Caramel choking on my
braces: a flash of violet, growing up with the taste

of a ruffian’s embers on my tongue. I cough up my incisors
into a bedside container. Paint the oak red. Sear my knuckles
hurt. Bite my lip bloody, and blind the metal’s aftertaste.

My rosary stained, its beads breaking by the wayside.
I learn that rough edges bleed quickly. That splinters are
to be pulled back, jabbed at with a sob. So grave

becomes a belly, becomes child; clawing herself
into the earth. So a midwife is a passage to godhood.
This bay is where a city’s daughters come of age, breathing

cigarette smoke into a storefront promenade. This sand,
is where a godmother shapes her nipping progeny.
This land is where a fledgling urchin takes flight.

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Anoushka Kumar (she/her) is a student and writer from India, with work forthcoming or published in Vagabond City Lit, perhappened mag, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere.

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