the last time i was here i would’ve staked my life on you, sack of bones begging desperately to get free, bleeding teeth sunk into the bit & last time i was here you thought hell was just like this house, bigger on the inside; last time i was here we lived the same night on repeat mosquitoes on my knee swelling until they burst & last time i was here the spanish moss told me secrets when my tea went lukewarm--do you know how difficult it is to eliminate all light from a room even if you black out board up nail shut all the windows & i suddenly had a newfound respect for those cicadas the ones that stay underground for seventeen years; last time i was here you weren’t alive not really you were blank-eyed & turning circles circles circles in the cloudy river i wish i didn’t believe in ghosts because you’re still three months younger than me but older than i’ll ever be & i read somewhere that ghosts disrupt temporal directionality make time nonlinear cut open every half-healed scab but last time i was here you didn’t want to eat me alive or at least you didn’t say it out loud & look, maybe it’d be better if we thought of that house as a baptism instead of a mouth & well. you’ve done your time, i guess. me, i’m just surprised you lasted this long.
Leela Raj-Sankar is an Indian-American teenager from Arizona. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rejection Letters, Brave Voices Magazine, and CLOVES Literary, among others. In her spare time, she can usually be found watching bad television or taking long naps. Say hi to her on Twitter @sickgirlisms.