Fabrication
By Karan Kapoor
It is hard to breathe, he said. It's an acquired skill, she said. She often sat on the tip of her nose and watched air tiptoeing in through her nose to her lungs, and counted how long it took to fill them both. It's okay to forget, she said. It's easy to confuse exits for entryways, he said. She asked him to sit at the door of his nose. Let's count, he said. One, she said. You, he said. Three, she said. More, he said. Five, she said. Fix, he said. Seven, she said. Fate, he said. Nine, she said. When, he said. Shut up, she said. Zen, he said. Eleven, she said. Dwell, he said, on blessings — no, curses. Thirteen, she said. French cuisine, he said. Fifteen, she said. Pristine, he said. Seventeen, she said. Daydream, he said. Nineteen, she said. Crime scene, he said. Don't show me your teeth, she said. It'd be easier to forget how to breathe than to learn how to breathe, he said.
Karan Kapoor has been awarded or placed for the James Hearst Poetry Prize, Frontier Global Poetry Prize, and Bellevue Literary Prize among others. A finalist for the Vallum and IHLR chapbook prizes, their work has appeared in AGNI, North American Review, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Rattle, JOYLAND and elsewhere. They’re an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. You can find them at: karankapoor.net