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  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I

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.

Anoushka Chauhan is a law student from India, and sometimes she writes poetry that draws inspiration from love, loss, and personal experiences.