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A Million Little Dyings
Every night a life comes to me in a different shape, a different
smell, a different dream. There is no logic in this insomnia,
in the taste of brine under my tongue, in leaking boats, in
fishermen sweat, this drop of old blood on the inside of
my left cheek. A home I have left is also a home refusing
to leave me. Swimming, paddling, drowning, the wet moon
on the beach, on the rising surf in the Arabian Sea. Here a river
twelve years wide, the women and their wicker baskets, a fish
market spied from a round hole in a hungry stomach. Here
a hill of fresh pomfret. A toddler becomes a sardine, becomes a
whale, becomes a shark with twenty teeth. On the plate
a skinned mackarel spiced with mustard seeds. Bite scars
on my neck. This is a place haunted by the whispers of a
wave I once cupped in my palms and turned into a silver pearl.
Such alchemy is only felt in a memory of my birth. The sun
emerging from the dim light of a morning like a crab in
coconut curry. These flavours of home are poison but a flood is
better than a…
