Not me,
but the glass bangle
jangling around my wrist.
I want to know,
do you still feel pain
when you are slammed
against linoleum floors?
Or when someone strokes you,
admires your jewel encrusted
syllables, the colors
of (y)our ancestry,
the way they glimmer
in sunlight.
Do you lurch,
bracing for the novelty
to rub off onto their fingers
like the golden glitter
once adorned around your edges?
Do you still
calculate the gravity
of the inevitable drop?
As you plummet do
you curse your careless
fragility, curse the burden
of being fraught in glass?
Do you hear yourself
scream when syllables
ooze out of
the cracks splintering
you into halves,
quarters, eighths?
At least those
are the shards
I can count
when
it is recess
it is the after-party
it is after introductions
it is at the restaurant
it is the assembly
it is
when it is just
you and me
and I am on my knees,
scooping your fragments
into the creamy
wells of my palms
and I wonder
what parts of you
will be left
behind this time,
won’t be swept
into oblivion by
the rough plastic
bristles of the
night janitor’s broom.
Do you know how I’ve
rebuilt you? How I’ve
held your jagged slivers
to moonlight, bathed you
in glue, clenched you in
my fists praying you
will stir in your slumber,
that your pieces will stick
together, that you’ll become
whole just one more time.
But I was not your savior.
Do you remember that time
you woke to the cackle of lightning,
of wet earth and rain? Because
what better wrist is there
than dirt? What better hollow
is there to hold the weight of your
letters? How else is there
to ensure you never tear
through the thin paper of human
hands. Like my own.
It was midnight when
mud stained my palms
like ink. Do you know
how I clawed through
pebble, clattered through
the bones of a hundred
mice to find you? Do
you know how I wept,
how every other crunch
echoed like yours?
It was dark. But do
you know how you
glimmered that night?
You were the emeralds,
the sapphires the diamonds
I plowed through to retrieve
you. How you reflected the
moonlight, how each of
your syllables glowed.
For the journey home
I stored you in the
cabinet of my heart.
I marveled at your
colors all over again
and at the beautiful
burden of carrying
something forged
in glass.
Pranavi Vedula is a sophomore at Phillips Exeter Academy. She is a winner of her school’s 2022 Lamont Younger Poets Prize, has been published twice by the Lune Spark Young Writer’s Short Story Contest, and has been recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards. She serves as a member of the NH Teen Poets Laureate Team, a critic for the NH Flume and Isinglass Committee, and as an editor for her school’s advice blog. Catch her conjugating French verbs, watching too many movies, or riding her bike outside.