Loading...

Budding

by Siri Palreddy

Siri Palreddy

I am an incoming first year at Amherst College, planning to study Biology and English. My favorite genres to explore are poetry and creative nonfiction. In my poetry, I often find myself writing short, clipped stanzas that convey an urgent tone. I explore a variety of topics, usually having to do with my identity as a first-generation American. In my creative nonfiction works, I also find I work best when I write with my own life in mind, and have written about my experience as a woman and a person of color, along with other things.

I enjoy writing, because it helps me explain the inexplicable to myself. Emotions, arguments, abstract concepts — I understand them best when letting the words in my head flow onto the keyboard. When I am in an ideal writing, my mind has no limits, and I find myself reexamining the stories that constitute my life so far, extracting material to use in my works. As any writer does, I hope that those who read my work will resonate with the experiences I tell, but also be drawn in and fascinated by the details specific to me.

When I’m not writing, I enjoy playing my violin and making lists. At my high school alma mater, Choate Rosemary Hall, I was a former copy editor for the Choate News and a highlighted writer for the Lit, the school’s primary literary magazine. I was awarded the Choate Rosemary Hall English Burger Prize at the end of my senior year for the best creative writing published in a Choate Rosemary Hall publication. I was also a shortlisted writer for the Food Writing competition of Write the World and a top 10% finalist in the national Profile in Courage Essay contest.

I hope to integrate my love of science and writing as a career in the future, combining two disciplines that I feel haven’t been explored in conjunction enough.

I enjoy writing, because it helps me explain the inexplicable to myself. Emotions, arguments, abstract concepts — I understand them best when letting the words in my head flow onto the keyboard. When I am in an ideal writing, my mind has no limits, and I find myself reexamining the stories that constitute my life so far, extracting material to use in my works. As any writer does, I hope that those who read my work will resonate with the experiences I tell, but also be drawn in and fascinated by the details specific to me.

When I’m not writing, I enjoy playing my violin and making lists. At my high school alma mater, Choate Rosemary Hall, I was a former copy editor for the Choate News and a highlighted writer for the Lit, the school’s primary literary magazine. I was awarded the Choate Rosemary Hall English Burger Prize at the end of my senior year for the best creative writing published in a Choate Rosemary Hall publication. I was also a shortlisted writer for the Food Writing competition of Write the World and a top 10% finalist in the national Profile in Courage Essay contest.

I hope to integrate my love of science and writing as a career in the future, combining two disciplines that I feel haven’t been explored in conjunction enough.

jungle fever

i stay still
there’s a snake’s tongue in my left nostril
and a vine tickling my esophagus
choking on nature
and all the while
the cicadas nestle inside my ear
their buzzing reverberating off my ear drums
only silencing when they die
only returning once the eggs hatch

i want to move
but my muscles are taut
the tendons are frozen
and my blood is melting
yet cooling down
at the same time
jungle fever has reduced
me to the maggoty corpse
of prey which no 
one wants to consume
what would want me inside themselves

i can’t tell you what’s happening inside me
because i am clueless to the fact
i am a host to the parasites
making themselves home
in my hair and bedding underneath my nails
and the only thing i can do
is pass this onto you

because suffering is a little easier
when you’re holding
your brother’s hand
already cold from death

the antithesis of a lie

i don’t know myself
i’d rather you not tell me
i prefer bedding
with my lies festering
beneath their oils
hidden and concealed
down under with the
worms and spotted mushrooms
mold growing through my
secret crevices
lending damp warmth to
moist and fertile air

no need for your
citrus harshness and
hurtful truths with a
dollop of reality
at least your version of it
i don’t believe your
tales about me
i am fine

inconceivably
spectacular in fact
is what and who i am
allow me to lie here
i have no desire
to hatch out of my
sanctuary and
into the truth

the antithesis of a lie

i don’t know myself
i’d rather you not tell me
i prefer bedding
with my lies festering
beneath their oils
hidden and concealed
down under with the
worms and spotted mushrooms
mold growing through my
secret crevices
lending damp warmth to
moist and fertile air

no need for your
citrus harshness and
hurtful truths with a
dollop of reality
at least your version of it
i don’t believe your
tales about me
i am fine

inconceivably
spectacular in fact
is what and who i am
allow me to lie here
i have no desire
to hatch out of my
sanctuary and
into the truth

I want the last words I write

I want the last thing I write to be a lie
I want you to wonder if the woman being burned in front of you
is a martyr or a traitor
if her motives were pure or tainted

I don’t want you to read me like a book
The windows that are my eyes have been shuttered
Don’t look into my soul
I want to be a mystery
In the final moments within my control

I want you to read my last words
and whisper them into my ashes

I want you to yearn for the truth
and taste my cinders
dip into my urn
a desperate experiment
to understand me for once

Search for my truth
Until you wither away
and lightning strikes 
and you are alone
a torch breathing empty smoke
into your children