On magnets and metaphors by Tejashree Murugan

I make two copies of every poem I write

And tuck one into dog-eared composition notebooks

So unassuming to look at and some would say

I bury them, but I think there’s enough death in

Life, so I make sure I leave it out of my art

So they stay behind calculus notes from

That year I couldn’t tell the difference between math and drawing class

And each Greek letter is like an old friend

Whispering hellos from a rip in the fabric of spacetime

And I’m glad only I find them beautiful

As they stand guard over all my secrets and desires

And I hide the other copy of the poem too

But this time behind metaphors of flowers and architecture

Who knew the word ‘blood’ could mean so many things -

Family, friends, friends who are family, family who are acquaintances

I make the crude words pretty, then I send them out

To zines, to reviews, to magazines, to newsletters, to anyone who’d have them really

And I smile when people tell me they liked it, why they liked it

But my heart’s just a soda can that gets a little more crushed

With every congratulations because I desperately wish someone

Would unpack the similes and find gold but maybe

I’m just buried too deep and no one wants slivers of dirty

Crescent moon-tipped fingernails and gold doesn’t stick to magnets anyway

---

Tejashree Murugan (she/her) is a writer and student at IIT Madras. Her work has been published in The B'K, The Aurora Journal, Ethel, and in:cite journal, among others. In her free time, she is a poetry reader for The Mark Literary Review. She can be reached @earth2tj