DRESSING ROOM

by Gaia Rajan

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My hair was rampant with twigs and leaves and a woman wrist deep ripped them out from my head. I shoved my hand into my mouth. When I wanted to yell I bit down. I couldn’t disturb the ballet recital in the next room. Nor could I alarm my yellow dress. Already it was woolled with dust, mud on the hem, dead beetles. A glance of blood on my shins. I bit down. Almost done said the woman and yanked at my scalp. I looked up and saw her. Her pale pulsing throat. Pinched nose and upper lip. She looked nothing like my mother. The whole world smeared behind her head. Her eyelashes were whispery, abrupt, but I imagined them longer, two thin spiders on the surface of a lamp.

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Gaia Rajan is the author of Killing It (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). His work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, the Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Gaia is an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in Pittsburgh and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.