Black on sorbet: three hair vignettes
for Sarnie
I
In the morning, my friend at the poetry workshop says
that the black of my hair against the maroon of my pullover
looks striking. I think of the hundreds of fallen mulberries
in my grandfather’s orchard, crushed into the wet humus.
In this paradise, I am a four-year-old Frida, lying spread-
eagled upon the loam. Jezebel butterflies quiver, pinned
to my ringlets. In time, they become drunk on my dreams,
slipping beneath my scalp, their wings heavy with merlot.
II
In the afternoon, at the pre-loved store, I look for knits
in grape. I want to hold on to this boon—black waves
on sorbet. I resolve to torch all the greys that threaten it.
The old woman in the shop asks if my curls are natural—
if she can touch them. I have been used to this since I was
a child, so I laugh and scrunch my eyes. When she strokes
a tendril of hair, her touch is achingly maternal. Suddenly
my mouth is not mine anymore, but an inky viola flower
opening to say It is my mother’s birthday today. I don’t know
why I share this. The words just slithered out—awkward,
without any context. The shop gyrates and grows strange.
The woman’s smile seems to fade as her hand folds away.
My hair turns into snakelets, hissing at her fingers. I want
to explain—that today, for some reason, I am thinking
of the poverty of touch. The intimacy of this is confronting.
My cheeks become stinging embers as I pay and leave.
Outside, the sky is full of compassion as the light holds me
in a knotted embrace. I molt, shedding my shame.
III
In the evening, an artist pen pal sends me a long-winded message.
I can tell he’s been drinking again, from his muddled meditations
on moths, and clovers, and the despondent beauty of Modigliani’s dark-
haired muse. He shares a painting—Jeanne Hebuterne in Red Shawl.
I dare to imagine I look like her. Her hair is a resting adder upon
her candy-apple scarf. My friend talks of a gaping emptiness even
as I shudder at my own. All night the rain lashes in lines of licorice.
If lightning were to cleave me, I would bleed in startled rubies.
The enigma: a zuihitsu
After the storm, the earth smelled like pennies and passion flowers. I walked through
the fields of wild sugarcane on slaked soil with the sky spilled into it.
*
Twelve years of age—a strange parentheses of time—tightrope walking the swiftly
blurring line between childhood, and the knowledge of strange burgeonings.
Shedding girl-skin
pulsing pupa
almost-woman
*
Summer ‘89. We were children, playing in the shadow of sacred figs. He was the boy
with the moth-dust hands, who could stop damselflies mid-flight.
Rugged older mythic
A spirit—of spruce wood muscle and forest laughter,
a homegrown magician with glitter flecks under his nails.
An enigma.
*
Late August. We sat by the lake, light skipping off the water, painting pixels on our
arms. The oak groaned above like a bored chaperone.
He handed me a twig,
our fingers brushing,
the air between us
sparked like flint.
The damselflies stirred.
*
That summer I found out that the color of a heartbeat is copper sulphate blue.
I was draped in an invisible veil.
The swarms flew. I stayed.
He only had eyes
for the dazzle of wings.
*
I wish I had asked him to teach me the secret spell,
asked if the world would be as wondrous when we grew older,
if I could wear wings even just until the stars came out.
*
The river between us—
uncrossable.
Neither of us stepped into it.
*
The memory of chiffon pinions,
luminous spots spinning in the wheel of my belly.
*
Light over water—
liquid silence.
*
Looking back, I am grateful
for the pause before knowing—
the storm-tinged stillness
just as
the damselfly lifts its wings.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Australian artist and poet of South Indian heritage. She is the author of Patchwork Fugue (Atomic Bohemian Press UK, 2024), A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys (winner of The Little Black Book Competition, Hedgehog Poetry Press UK, 2024), and three digital micro-chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project (US). She has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. She won the 66th Moon Prize awarded by Writing in a Woman's Voice Journal, the 2024 Don Bank Short Fiction Cup, and the Winged Muse's Writing Competition in March 2025. She lives and works in Lindfield, on traditional Gammeragal land.
Header image by Elise Vermeer
