Back to Issue 16.

Pleiomorph

Jayant Kashyap

“You and I
have begun to blur.”

—Will Graham to Hannibal Lecter

There are only so many characters
I can pack into myself.

Every time I wake up, 
I’m a different
person—

yesterday, I woke
to a broken mirror, my face

bleeding.

The cotton you’d left in the drawer
had coloured itself.

The doctor said it’ll heal
in air, that caging forms pus—

forms bile—

said use soap,
learn how to clean a wound.

The soap’s broken itself
into malleable flints.

I try making them one again,
so the blood washes off.

Its joints etched red
like bird bones

in a china.

The day before, the mirror
smiled back;

the day before
the day before

there was no mirror—
there are only so many

characters—

About the writer