Kaavya Butaney
somewhere, in the dead of the night,
there is a man confessing to a copper
virgin mary, smoking
a chain of cheap, stale cigarettes,
guiltily finding solace in the
unholy while he scrubs himself clean.
oh, our mother who art in heaven,
forgive me for my trespasses.
a block away, there is a girl who
has lost her grip on it, idly ripping out
patches of decayed grass, spinning
the galaxy into new constellations in her mind
while she sings some favorite song.
i can’t get you off my mind/i can’t
get you off in general.
and there are friends wandering through
an empty college campus, unable to
explain the russian nesting doll of emptiness
away, the words not a balm but a toxin,
mouths running on empty.
there’s something wrong and i don’t know
what it is.
in the pitch black, a little boy
stares shamelessly at a stranger who
cannot help but stare back, convinced
she must have some message or
adage, something to tell him,
but there is nothing.
Kaavya Butaney is a junior studying biology, journalism and (sometimes) Asian American Studies. She can be found working in her lab, drinking far too much coffee across Evanston and editing on some student mag or another.
