1.

Marc tells me that’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard—

that I'm hoping that in the next one,

I’ll be a carrot ripped out of the earth,

root-guts hanging out from the underneath,

waking up and

knowing I’m dying,

closing my eyes,

only to wake up to the grocery-store mist going off

every two minutes,

my new prayer is still in absolution but

now, from giant, soft-flesh hands that grab around,

but never forward.

So I tell him, really, I just want everything to be kinder

but the grown’s still torn up regardless:

two carrots on farm-fucked fields

two brown children in war-fucked cities,

(this phrase has been removed due to our Community Guidelines)

the

thing that brought us together in the first place

and dazed, I wonder if we’d grown in the same

spittle of earth—of any earth at all—

if our roots would touch.

Later,

Marc holds my hand in the aisle for Granola/Cereal/Cookies,

saying in the twitch of his curving fingers:

They already do.

2.

Marc wants me most in the evening,

when the sun walks itself down to be a voyeur

peeking through slit-blinds.

And the thing about him is that he’ll

grab the bend of your knee, starting

at the ankle—

running and running, like a

heartbeat and a machine,

but what matters is that I can hear

the blood pumping. It's a piston

and I hear the water

pour and pour.

I tell him, I can feel you.

He looks at me, hot with

a red mouth

split open,

saying nothing.

We both know he can’t.

3.

I met Marc at:

(It seems like you’re having some trouble. Would you like for me to suggest some places?)

the store

the park

a bar

the bathroom of the bar, too busy mouthing at him all over to ask him his name

that sharp right turn I hate taking where I accidentally hit him with my car

on Hinge/Tinder/Bumble

on the street where we just kept on looking

a cafe

through a friend

somewhere in all of this but before, two seeds in

this swallowing earth

4.

There is no waiting and

there is no hurt,

Marc doesn't go to the bars

or the casino

and Marc doesn't tell you about all of

the other girls who want to fuck him, how

he's doing you a big favor by not meeting them

half-way, bodies pressed against sink-rims and

metallic car-skin and the insides of apartment doors —

there are none, because

there's nothing there, nothing before

or after and

nowhere to go.

Marc can't remember

when I miss him most.

He says to me:

Sure, the silence hurts less but it

kills you just the same.

Kavya Racheeti was born in Hyderabad, India and raised in Fremont, California. She is a junior literature major and biology minor from the University of Texas at Dallas. She has been a part of the editorial boards for two award-winning collegiate newspapers, The Retrograde and The Mercury. She also writes for her university's opinion and satire magazine, AMP. When not writing, she likes to pretend that she is the Anthony Bourdain of the DFW metroplex by finding the best, most-niche restaurants.