Shamala Gallagher was born in San Jose, California, to a South Indian mother and Irish-American father. Her essays and poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Missouri Review, Verse Daily, VOLT, Copper Nickel, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and the author of a chapbook, I Learned the Language of Barbs and Sparks No One Spoke (dancing girl press, 2015). She holds an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and now lives in Athens, Georgia, where she is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. She is working on a book of essays, Mooncalf.

ESSAY

On Shining and Staring / On Ruin

By SHAMALA GALLAGHER

“I have come to the coffee shop so that I might feel the right degree alone. The air has not broken free of the prickling of morning.”