Incognito

The evening brings unexpected rain,
black peat detonates,
thick with petrichor.
I curl beside an anthill,
weeping willows swaying above
for cover.

The lake sows its last specks of sun
into the wind.
Damselflies seek refuge
behind leaves and upturned canopy
of water lilies.

When the sun melts behind the hills
I hear the three syllables of my name
arrowing through the field
in omnidirectional skeins.

I toe the lilting line
between sanctuary and prison,
looking up at the swarm of stars
slowly revealing themselves.

They open their eyes
in the soot of the night.
They pretend not to see me—
promise to not give my cover away.

**

New Arrivals

Cat safety always takes precedence—
so all the flowers my friends bring
go to my neighbor’s house.

I’ve bid goodbye to many bouquets
that could spell poison for my cat:
Asiatic lilies with their speckled throats,
belladonna bells in their bronze overcoats,
and the Clivias of March that glow
with the kiss of the sun.

But when a friend arrives with a basket
of Baby’s breath, the delicate inflorescence
weakens my resolve.
I place them on the highest shelf
out of my cat’s reach, suspended
like a gauze of stars
between the poems of Scott Elder
and Les Murray.

My cat stalks the foot of the bookshelf
with disapproving eyes.
At night she watches me paint the flowers
in charcoal and gouache.

In the morning, I leave the bouquet
at my neighbor’s doorstep
with the same familiar note:
New arrivals, Liz. Enjoy.

But unlike all the others, these beauties
have lived twice—once
in their fragile clusters,
and forever in my Canson pad—
harmless, eternal,
shedding no petals.

**

Parallel blooms

That winter, blight came for the cherry trees
on Hill Street. First, in a smattering of spots,

then a mottling of grey creeping up in the guise
of lichen. Soon it revealed its true nature—

mildew of powdery green, infecting the trunks.
That same winter, I found an anomaly on the helix

of my left ear—a pulsing bud filled with blood.
Soon, the arborists came for the trees

with their chainsaws and secateurs.
In Pymble, in the glare of polarized light,

a doctor mapped my moles—seven ruby droplets
spattered in a curve from my neck down

to my breasts. On Hill Street, new saplings replaced
the row of cankered cherry trees. In three years

they grew to sprightly shrubs spangled with mauve,
ready to flower in the spring. Yoshino cherry,

their weatherproof tags say. Over three winters,
my moles receded. Benign nevi, my records say.

Pinpricks remain where the russet buds once glistened—
skin dimpled in tell-tale grooves. The trees begin anew,

their showy crowns flecked with ivory blossoms.
I quietly walk beside them, relieved in my unflowering.

** 

Metamorphosis

With whom can I share this discomfort?
The invisible knowledge of change,
strange buds pushing up against skin
like cotyledons from the earth.

I am the waif
who went to sleep among the reeds
and woke in a different body—
tilled earth, warm and restless,
fertile for sowing.

Beneath my palms, soil clings,
granular and damp. I feel
a sprouting from within.

I lie hidden in the swaying tufts,
a frightened animal, waiting
to be released.
A warmth spreads below
my solar plexus—the shape
of a ripening pear.

I blink through the filaments of grass
and hush
the twilight sky.

** 

The gift

They were his gift to me—
ominous and cruel:
dragonflies with their wings twisted,
posed on a eucalyptus twig.

I watched in horror—the fractal eyes
of the sky-dancers fading away,
their mirrors broken
into a thousand prism-chaff.

Rigor mortis—paper light.

I never understood his offering—
the malice in his game,
the dragonflies dead on the bough
before I even arrived.

Years later, I lie in bed,
thinking of them—
how their spirits ebbed,
how their bodies became a garland
of torment in the hands
of an adolescent boy,
the memory pressing like a yoke
on my shoulder,
fused bones
freezing and thawing—
a curse,
a reliquary of pain.

---

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a widely published and award-winning Indian–Australian poet and visual artist. She has received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, and her work has appeared in Cordite, Poetry Sydney, Black Bough Poetry (UK), and other international journals. Her artwork has appeared on the covers of numerous journals, including Yale Divinity School, Amsterdam Quarterly, and West Trestle Review. She is the author of Patchwork Fugue (Atomic Bohemian Press, UK) and A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys (Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK), winner of the Little Black Book Competition. A new collection is forthcoming with 5 Islands Press in 2026. She is the inaugural Writer in Residence, Woollahra Libraries (2026). She lives in Lindfield, on Gammergal land. Find her on X @oormilaprahlad and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings