Standing at this threshold of worlds – riverine-algae,
waterworn-rock: I am giving myself over to Desire.

I’m opening my wings like a black cormorant sunning
itself on a rock. My bill is a hotbed of fish-bodies:

carp, guppy, mackerel. I’ve come from the blood of
my mother, the snake-eel who wouldn’t ask for

water even if she were scalding from heatwaves.
I do not take the sacrifices of her black, slender 

apparition lightly. If you parch me, I will cut you
like one of my piscine meals – small and bloody.

Kunjana Parashar lives in Mumbai. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in 45th Parallel, Columba, SWWIM Every Day, Parentheses Journal, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @wolfwasp.