Aishvarya Arora
my sister avoids me. i can’t deliver his penchant for silence shelled onto the ends of crass jokes. dressed in sensible pullovers he makes you crack. the yoke of the laugh. i crack before i ever deliver the punchline. even after i tell her loss makes all things grow beautiful, my mother donates his socks. his ear flap winter hat. the machine he used to straighten his posture. i plead with wind, can you breathe like him? our first rain without him streaks the scalp of the blue-yellow morning. we can’t stop it; i ask my barber for his last haircut.
Aishvarya Arora is a poet from Queens, NY. Their pamphlet Mr. Time won the Gold Line Press Poetry Contest and will be published in March of 2026. Their writing has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and Gulf Coast, among other publications. Currently, they teach creative writing at Cornell University and create poetry ephemera through their micro-press, Lavender Codex. Find them online at coolslug.wordpress.com.
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