On Pre-emption
by Anoushka Chauhan
If you train your ears to the
frequency of the quieter, you
hear the jingling of keys in the
next ghost town, the rustle of
the moth dying by dawn. If you
train your eyes to detail, there glows
something in the fissures of your
palm, amid the wrinkles around
your mother’s eyes, in the gap
between my teeth. It's light. It's
trapped. See, every city is too small
to house a dream of such form. I
was seven and confused when I
learnt a light-year is a measure
of distance, not light. You’re only
four hundred and seventy-two cities
away. That’s a trillion lights. That’s
still less than a light-year away. Look,
look at the courtroom, the plea, the
punitive damages. The dust motes lining
the files that contain the confidential.
Listen, we only have enough time as
we choose to love in. The sparrows
only speak the language of mothers and
reason as much as I do. The river is not
deep enough to swallow everything before
swimming to the other bank. We are
barely grown. We have never held
enough light in our hands to be
this fearful of the dark anyway.
frequency of the quieter, you
hear the jingling of keys in the
next ghost town, the rustle of
the moth dying by dawn. If you
train your eyes to detail, there glows
something in the fissures of your
palm, amid the wrinkles around
your mother’s eyes, in the gap
between my teeth. It's light. It's
trapped. See, every city is too small
to house a dream of such form. I
was seven and confused when I
learnt a light-year is a measure
of distance, not light. You’re only
four hundred and seventy-two cities
away. That’s a trillion lights. That’s
still less than a light-year away. Look,
look at the courtroom, the plea, the
punitive damages. The dust motes lining
the files that contain the confidential.
Listen, we only have enough time as
we choose to love in. The sparrows
only speak the language of mothers and
reason as much as I do. The river is not
deep enough to swallow everything before
swimming to the other bank. We are
barely grown. We have never held
enough light in our hands to be
this fearful of the dark anyway.
Anoushka Chauhan is a law student from India, and sometimes she writes poetry that draws inspiration from love, loss, and personal experiences.