What if the smell in my room

is not the brown skin samosa

cold in the corner, grease leaking

through wooden floors, or the curry

my mother left dead on the desk

next to the photos where sunlight

from a distant summer is caught between

some fat boy’s teeth, laughing

with a stranger’s family? no,

it’s the mustard of sweat,

the breath of silence salty

with unspoken words, leftover

from my name being called

for the first time ■

Words by Mukahang Limbu. Art by Emma Rath and Sasha LaCômbe.