Only You

Aakriti Karun

If you’d asked me whether I was lying, I’d have said, I’m as honest as I can be without telling

you the truth—which is a good rule of thumb for any situation, including the ones where Kant

expects you to hand over your friend to the murderer. All this dialogue is made up, but you knew

that. I worry I’m becoming a pathological liar sometimes, but then I know it’s really a question

of identity, which is to say what you can get away with. How much of myself can I get away

with? Not much. Not much at all. Not to get sentimental, but do you remember that time we were

standing in the airport—and of all the people waiting with us, this not entirely awkward but

never comfortable silence only stretched out from my wrist to your ankle? I bite my finger to

shock myself out of my sadness, and it tastes sweet and soft. I used to spend hours each day

tracking your online status, but now I have an app for it. There’s something about wanting—I

want to place it on my tongue and close my teeth, let it rest safe and warm like a chew toy. I

wonder how much longer I’ll have to wait before I become an AI system so you can fall in love

with me. They tell me this isn’t possible, but you can imagine so much and who’s to tell us we’re

not real? Every stranger’s car that stops where it shouldn’t is yours—each time, I stand there, in

the middle of a run, pretending to catch my breath when what I’m really doing is looking through

the car windows to figure out whether the vague shape of a boy could put us together. Each time

it rains I wonder whether I’ll have to refuse your offer of a ride thrice before I get in, wet and

miserable. Don’t you remember how my hands shook the last time I tried to open that door? You

had to lean back from the front seat to open it for me, and now you make cameo appearances in

all my stories. Love, my hands are still shaking. There’s something so pathetic about wanting,

but all of poetry is pathetic. All of poetry is a girl stopping in the middle of a run, pretending to

catch her breath when what she’s really doing is feeding that chew toy on her tongue, letting it

grow bigger and bigger until it becomes her. Our suitcases were sliding down the chain like

slugs, and I was transformed. “There it is,” I said to no one in particular and you, only you.

Aakriti Karun is a senior at KC High, India. A Dorothy West Scholar, she has been recognised by the Adroit Prizes for Prose and the Young Poets Network. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Rumpus, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Ruminate and elsewhere. She is a Submissions Editor at Smokelong Quarterly.