SANJANA SHANKAR
on sisyphus and how to smile
there are faces on the glass wall in the shower. faces you once could have traced, fingertips soft and reckless, steam still on your skin. you don’t think you did; but those are the only faces you see anymore. they smile at you, and you are grateful for small mercies.
living in a graveyard of empty glass bottles, the heaps of clothes on your floor transform into ephialtes at the stroke of midnight. they are almost old friends; inescapable eventualities. you remember your mother’s gentle hands and kind eyes. but memories do not keep you warm and in the end, you are pathetically, terribly, truly alone.
waking up in the morning is a sisyphean task; your eyelids, the boulders you struggle to push up a mountain of desperation. you sing a song for the summer, a quiet recollection of better times. your voice cracks, like fissures in the Grand Canyon. it feels like aeons since you last spoke.
time moves like molasses, only not half as sweet. calendars are words on a page to you now; you can’t remember when you got past april. perhaps you never did.
the city is an inferno; you nail all your windows shut. sometimes, when your bedroom is bathed in crimson, you wonder whether it is them, trapped in the first rung of hell, or you; trapped within. you made it out safe, but did you make it out alive?
you subsist on canned baked beans and the sweetness of your old dreams, but stocks are running low and your bones are growing old. somedays, you stand in front of your reflection and raise your fingers to the edges of your mouth; tugging and pulling to find a fracture of the person you once were. it is never enough. the mirror cracks. you never do.
sanjana shankar (sana) is a desi teenager with an affinity for cats, coffee and creative writing. she exists solely off of pinterest boards, YA lit and copious amounts of ocean vuong. she runs a lit mag (@filtercoffeemag on twitter) with her best friend. say hi to her on twitter at @infinitesmals!