tangerines
By Kaavya Butaney
you used to wear my voice like a too-small sweater and I bare your grin like a
mask, refracted images of unruly waves and impatient hands and
synchronized, manic cackles. tell me, what does belonging matter when
we are just two pearly orange blossoms on the same branch?
dizzy and too small for these gentle, cobblestone hills and sheer blue water,
we traipse through the tree-laden museum, reading a thousand histories of
the sourest things, biting into a bitter off-season tangerine and
spitting out the seeds. you wander through uneven streets alone,
and i always sway to follow, damned to watching you perform a version
of both of us I cannot maintain.
the world is always shifting and colliding into a new frame of reference,
except for you. you are a constantly changing iteration of us, refracting
all my unsavory and soft perfections. even when
you warp and reshape, and even when I am left behind, you are still
all I’ve ever known. all I could ever be captured within your ribs.
you don’t have the patience to keep teaching me guitar, and I keep
forgetting which chord is which, my fingers twitching on the neck of it,
and I remember sighing at your fragmented attempts to follow its melody,
and how your voice still cracks on the lull of the notes.
I store my heart behind yours, tucked in the ribs. it’s always been with you, even
when you can’t stand the sight of me. in this twisted inheritance, you already
have the greatest of my potentials, all the unsafe speeds without the drag of
voracity. careful compassion without a bitten tongue.
we are walking through this city, drizzled in the barest flutter of ice and snow,
solace in the silence, just footsteps out of step with each other.
and even in the cold, despite your whinge, you are still the better of us.
Kaavya Butaney is an undergraduate studying biology and journalism, and she is originally from Northern California. She is an avid enjoyer of iced coffee, indie music and melancholy poetry. You can find her works in Lumina Journal and Northwestern’s Helicon.
Artwork Source: “Tangerine Sugar,” Benjamin Schonzeit. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Dr. & Mrs. Samuel S. Mandel. Used with permission.
The Turning Leaf Journal 