Thursday nights. Mushrooms. Garlic butter. A little cheese. I set the table for one. At the edge sits a half-consumed, sandalwood-scented candle, which I don’t light. Why waste wax-melt and ambience on someone I needn’t quite please. Yesterday, I watched a Stand-up Tragedy. Funny Frenchman asking uncomfortable questions that no one answers: quite funny. And later, over pizza, I heard cow when M said a car had almost crashed into his bike the evening before. Again, funny. The cheese on my mushrooms is bubbled and satiny. I sit facing two Amaltas trees that I don’t see in full bloom on this moonless night. Outside, someone’s pet named Veera is lost. I hear them call out its name, over and over. I imagine Veera, a lovely golden retriever, alone in a snowfield even though I’m 1800 miles from the faintest hint of snow. Just for the heck of it, I strike a match and light the sandalwood candle, watch its heat slowly mingle with the air.
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Vismai Rao’s poems appear in Salamander, RHINO, Rust + Moth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pithead Chapel, Psaltery & Lyre, Jet Fuel Review, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Orison Anthology. She serves as Poetry Editor for The Night Heron Barks. You can find her on Twitter @vismairao.