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 the chapbooks Moth Funerals (Glass Poetry Press 2020) and Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). Their work is published or forthcoming in Best New Poets, the Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. They live in Pittsburgh and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.