Salonee Verma (15)
requiem for a modern-day ophelia
butter sunlight dapples through cracked
brown window-panes and a sloping
brown ceiling, motes of dust suspended in
honey-heavy air, flowing and resting on
creaky brown floorboards and a halcyon
drowned girl grasping rue in cold fingers, lying
on her stomach; black hair, tied
over a twisted-up neck, falls and
joins the dust settling over
glass-brown eyes gone mad
why don’t they care about dead brown girls
when their hamlet is white and still-alive?
Salonee Verma is an Indian-American writer and the co-founder of antinarrative, a collaborative zine. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Backslash Lit, Pollux Journal, zindabad zine, Dishsoap Quarterly, and more. She has been recognized in the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards. Find her online at saloneeverma.carrd.co.
requiem for a modern-day ophelia
butter sunlight dapples through cracked
brown window-panes and a sloping
brown ceiling, motes of dust suspended in
honey-heavy air, flowing and resting on
creaky brown floorboards and a halcyon
drowned girl grasping rue in cold fingers, lying
on her stomach; black hair, tied
over a twisted-up neck, falls and
joins the dust settling over
glass-brown eyes gone mad
why don’t they care about dead brown girls
when their hamlet is white and still-alive?
Salonee Verma is an Indian-American writer and the co-founder of antinarrative, a collaborative zine. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Backslash Lit, Pollux Journal, zindabad zine, Dishsoap Quarterly, and more. She has been recognized in the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards. Find her online at saloneeverma.carrd.co.