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.
