don’t give me cut fruit, skinned against the forearm of a knife, don’t give me sleek china, charcuterie arrangement of pear swans and prosciutto peonies—give me raw give me real like a sweaty hug—our nails cleavering the other’s weeping back—a warm tight orange, fibrous peel still glued to its skin—give me unyielding—i don’t want your petal-pretty i want bitter pollen and snot rivers converging in crooked teeth—i sit at our altar dedicating redwood after redwood to you thinking maybe forest-bathing together will intertwine us like roots older than our silhouette—yet all you give me: this sweet sickness only a swallow away from the artificial—i ask for something real, real like strands clogging the drain foggy with conditioner suds like the snowy inside of an ear like a cocoon like single-spaced stories and slur-spitting cousins like dirty laundry and lovebites left by curling irons like hyperpigmented twin-pools—i ask for special like each menstruation’s own god like each lover’s own honey like each heart’s own hot ephipany

Prarthana Aggarwal (she/her) is a writer from various cities in India, including New Delhi where she was born and Pune where she grew up in two boarding schools. Her work explores the itch of religion, consumption and love, the heirloom pain of accents and superstitions using fruit imagery, Hindi incantations, idioms, and dream journal excerpts. Her debut chapbook let sleeping dogs lie was published by Sunset Press in 2025. She shares personal essays, poetry, and everything in between on her Substack page, poem titles etc.