a recipe for apple pie

by Neeraja Srinivasan

First, knead the dough with your salty palms. 

Touch is good.

Cut into two equal halves.

I feel like calling Ma. I need to be picked up. 

Roll the dough, stretch as thin as possible.

I don’t have another poem in me.

Cut neat strips and braid into a pretty lattice crust. 

I’d build you a sugary home out of this dough, 

you know that right?

with coral coloured walls and peonies in pots. 

Bake for an hour until golden crispy. 

We’ve made it this far, we try to be good. 

Love stored in the kitchen is special, they say.

Is it working?  

Glaze with syrup and crushed cinnamon. 

I add a little extra. Look. Look at this abomination. 

Look at how we do not have to love. 

Look at how we choose to. 

Neeraja Srinivasan is 22 years old and studying Literature and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. She shuffles between Chennai and Delhi, and is always chasing the sun. She loves a good mug cake, big flowers, acrylic paints and judging books by their covers. Her work has been published by the Hindustan Times, Museum of Material Memory, The Remnant Archive, Brown History, Platform Magazine and Paper Planes Magazine, amongst others.