Autopsy
Sreeja Naskar

I wish I could stop in front of the
mirror and ask myself how I loved
you even after all that, how I buried
the words beneath my ribs, overlooked
the spaces between words, burned
limbs and flesh only to be in love.
The truth is, fifteen is a fucking
inconvenient time to think about love,
let alone to be in it. The worst part is
how we smile at the lies and let them

lie on our faces. But what’s worse than that

is that this poem is not even about love,
or me, or you, or us together.

I think I will drape it in sorrow, the brightest

shade of the ocean outside my window,
and drown in it as quietly as possible.

You’ll never have to know I knew it too.

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Sreeja Naskar’s Comments

I wrote this when I was 15, just sitting in the heaviness of losing my grandad years ago—who was honestly the first person I ever loved deeply. It’s dressed up like a love poem, but it’s really about grief, how it can sneak up years later, wearing someone else’s face, and how hard it is to name loss when you’re young. I didn’t know how to say, “I miss you,” so I wrapped it in other words.

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