I’ll lose everything, eventually.
I’ll leave my phone on a restaurant table
the night before I fly out. Someday
I won’t recognize the number. Listen,
I left my notebook full of secrets under
one of the chairs in the lecture hall. Now
someone’s heels are brushing against
my newest molestation. It doesn’t bother me,
I lost my headband between the cushions
of a bus, I fell asleep chest up, once I managed
to imagine it was the Earth moving fast
and not our wheels. I’ll lose my wisdom teeth
without ever realizing; I’ll wake up
with pulsing memories of metals at my jaw,
fingers in my mouth,
blood seeping soft in cotton balls.

Devaki is a community college transfer at UC Berkeley studying rhetoric, as well as a reporter for the student paper. Their writing, which has appeared in Entropy and Royal Rose Magazine, centers around childhood trauma, loss, and the South Asian diaspora.