Decipher the Smoke

In her debut chapbook of poetry, Decipher the Smoke, Nora Gupta "scratch[es] through the pretty pink, the hot pink, the girly-girl pink universe" to reveal the true, indiscernible colors of girlhood. The browned bulb of childhood. The way bodies slither under white LED gas station lights into self-discovery. Through these poems, Gupta asks her reader to reckon with-and perhaps even decipher-the thinning line between girlhood and grief, one often stepped right over without second thought. Indeed, while reckoning with the simultaneous devastating loss of a close family member and realization of her own impending womanhood, Gupta navigates a world of escalation and apocalypse to uncover what-shade by shade-girlhood truly means to her.