Seeds and All

POETRY

Written by Banisha Pratap (she/her) @bxnisha | Contributing Writer

I need to know the name of the night where I drank so much at a friend of a friend’s flat party that I couldn’t stop throwing up in their bathroom. I need to know the name of the train I catch every morning at eight and the shape of the buildings I like. I need to know the name of every star in the sky. I want everything to have a name, a word to explain it. Something to call it. I want everything to be in boxes and on my shelf. There should be a neatly-written label and it should be colour coded. Blue for my emotions, orange for trivia I saw on the internet and bright red for my memories.

I can’t bear this savage desire growing in my spine and my tongue that hangs heavy with hunger. I need to know. It’s turned me into a story older than the water trapped in sand. I’ll follow the whispers knitted in the air and sneak into the garden. I’ll unhinge my jaw and swallow the apple whole, seeds and all. I’ll wipe my chin and look into the sky, I’ll learn the unknowable. I’ll keep a box of all the sorrows of the world under my bed and not open it like I’m instructed to. But I am weak and greedy so I’ll give into my temptations and see what could possibly be so bad.

My hunger is a ferocious beast that I can never satisfy. There is always more to know, more to learn.