We chase the horizon
A little chase-your-dream spirit and a lot of naivety
Tiny feet measure the length and breadth of the beach
Our arms spread out
Not fully, because ma told us to stay close
But enough to feel like we are in the Titanic
Mumma sits on a beach mat with all our beach stuff-
A well experienced guardian (it is her fourth time in life and first on sand)
We trust her to catch us when the waves throw us away
To heal our salt water wounds
To be our own shadow
The guardian against the setting sun and the blazing light.
The beach was always our choice
You can feel the earth throbbing right below your bare feet
We stand facing the distant land of dreams
The stairway to heaven
Or if it pleases, a step down to earthly beings
We wondered in collective amusement (I don’t know how I know this but I do)
If Earth was their choice like beaches were ours?
Early 2010, he took the stairway alone
We kept asking why he wouldn’t even invite us
We could all sip on coconut water together
Get another perspective
Be the unconventional daughters he always wanted us to become
Maybe we already were since death was a ‘stairway’ for us
It was never talked about
The pain, the loss
We played in sand instead,
Burying my youngest sister right up to her neck
(We wouldn’t have stopped at neck if it wasn’t for mumma)
We splashed water from the shallow parts
We wished so hard to grow old only because ageing stretched your limbs out
So we could be two more steps past our sitting-on-the-beach-mat ma’s reach
We laughed when the wind blinded us with our own hair
And squinted when it pushed grains of sand into our eyes
But most importantly we returned
Because the wind never quit on us
A signboard warns us to not leave our belongings unattended
The air obeys by blowing right where we choose to exist
If what every widow looks for is just new love and fresh desire
Then ma was eligible to be on top of her class
If only they knew their answer was indeed ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’
And The Beatles playing cupid,
They would ever take their shoes off and step indoors
If only they knew how suffocating a brick home was for their lover
And the velocity of their love itself,
Maybe they would all just turn to dust.
Dust. The inseparable-from-air dust.
For most part the beach felt like home
Somehow the alliances broken by nature were also forged by it here
As silly as it sounds now and as profound as the meaning of it, it was very simple
The wind was our soulmate.
We trusted ma and she trusted the breeze
The air. The wind.
To catch us when the waves throw us away
To heal our salt water wounds
To be our own shadow
The guardian against the setting sun and the blazing light.
Ma has turned to dust, truly
The inseparable-from-air dust
the kind visible in light
circling, moving never stopping
never dropping, never letting gravity control it
I am nearing my time (as we all are, inevitably).
Maybe death is a stairway or a turning to dust
or maybe death is the faint line of horizon at the beach
so let me rot in the sand
stink a little, sink a little
till my body turns to dust and my scent imbues the air
till my body inches an inch closer to ma and pa
till I become the implausible horizon.
1 Comment
so beautifully written!