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The Forest of Me

Garima Chhikara

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Just like that, my body hair became thorns. I stopped shaving—arms, underarms, legs, even my upper lip—and abandoned threading my eyebrows, which need tending to resemble eyebrows at all.

In the first few weeks, my hair was like grass that tickled my partner’s bare back, his cheeks, his lips. He ran his fingers through it and inhaled me like rain on dry earth.

Then came the weeds. He flew from city to city, pitching a clever tool built on my words. He spoke over drinks in glass buildings, while I stayed home growing. He couldn’t wait to be with me, he would say.

I fed the weeds all sorts of junk, and the more I ate, the hungrier I became. The hair had more ground to cover, but it never flourished; it sprawled, an excess with no reward.

One night, I woke to the bedsheet tangled like a brittle vine. My partner curled like a cat in a far corner. His hands were locked on his chest instead of cupping my breasts as they once did. He looked small, the way regret makes a body shrink.

The thorns covered me. Their roots burned my insides. I couldn’t move. I took so much space, there was nowhere left to go. I am still there, unmoving, with everyone else small and far away. When I call out, no one answers; my voice is lost in the forest of me.

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Garima Chhikara is a writer from Bangalore, India. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Forge Literary Magazine, Hobart, Cherry Tree, Sky Island Journal, Lost Balloon, Halfway Down the Stairs, and elsewhere. Find her at garimachhikara.com.

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