ku
Nooks Krannie
we were drinking coffee and talking about your exam. i poured a second cup and someone died outside your apartment. i could’ve died, you were speaking to yourself more. even from this angle, your thinness was painful. my shoulders were bloated, an existential form of inflation that had steadily increased in precise increments for each day i’ve known you. it was an eventual reality that i’d tried to avoid. on your curtains, triangles of wide eyed kittens in ideal geometry were projecting my inner anxiety, the red looks like jello vomit on husk. you were staring at the back of your hands. the rushing of a million feet and gross whispers concealed an extreme upset, all fake. all. close the window, ku. i didn’t want the outside death to touch me. i’m scared of smelling it. you didn’t move, your hands didn’t either. we sat in silence for some minutes. after a while the sirens started up again and i could hear the hush, hush getting louder. someone died outside your apartment and i wondered if it could’ve been me and if you would accept it easily. i followed your gaze, resting on bleached crows, resigning themselves to a quiet mouth.
*
enjoy yourself, you wiggled your fingers under your bangs. do you do this a lot? the red was setting on the top part of your forehead. i reached out and touched it lightly, it looked wet. you raised your eyebrows a bit and i saw red baby powder with broken glitter fall and disappear. you shook your hair on the front. talc, silk. it was $12. you took my hand and the bottle bounced off the floor. like any murder scene evaporated in cheap dye. pain in malls is hard to quit. red was a waste. just powder, hadn’t washed.
*
when i was 15, the sea was a man made dumping ground for community trash. it’s bad luck to swim in it. i believed it. during the worst storm of a new welcome season, i saw the top of your head floating but still. i sat beside the trash, further so it wouldn’t touch me. when you emerged, your face was covered in light and pieces of filled receipts. you walked over and emptied a disfigured pepsi can on my feet. plastic moon, rabbit clips falling. it’s bad luck. i drank my throat before i could spit. side of my body felt dirty, covered in monolith clouds.
about the writer
Nooks Krannie is a Palestinian/Persian female writer from Montreal, Canada. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, "I have hard feelings & I wish I could quit chocolate" (Moloko House Press, 2016) and "candied pussy" (Thistlemilk Press, 2017).nkrannie.com insta: @nookskrannie