Prisha Lekhak
Wheat embroidered
around her wrists,
much like the bracelet
she hides underneath—
underneath her cot
alongside the letters
and a letter
for indifferent people
thorns hug her
patched-up skirt;
she twirls and twirls;
wind through
her calloused palms
“Peace,” she calls it.
She sheds rivulets
from her eyes
till they sting
every time a strand
of her mother’s legacy
falls down her hair,
the ones that
curl at the ends
Her uncle loves
to caress
while her prayers
commence
Wheat embroidered
around her arms;
oh, how they wilt
now at her touch
The roses retract
when they feel her footsteps
under the mud-hewn
fabric
She’s covered from head to toe,
the thorns penetrate
her forever bruised skin
Her alabaster cheeks
stricken with mud and disgust
of every local
that once pitied and loved
the little angel
she once was
Halo; her own chaplet of wheat
