i eat a trumpet solo for breakfast as the shehnai peeks at me through my pantry’s crescent door. tomorrow, i adopted a country and built ten-storey buildings for my daughters to coo from. how do you properly summon frost? make a grocery list of things you’ll never find-

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1. newspaper clippings of your life

2. hairties swallowed by my dog

3. mother’s dreams (she sleeps soundless and quick)

4. purple margarine.

 

i can make ice with these, but i want frost. bereft of the hull of divination, any eulogy i make to leaving the sea sounds insincere. a collar around my neck, i run around the lighthouse thrice in a minute as it drags fisher boats off the horizon and banishes ships to the sky. i join the crows in cawing for rice and sit on the clothesline, finally feasting on the bitumen of my lover. daughters are already lined up on the corridor lining the coast. cast nets and pull the sea into your mouths. become deltas. swallow men. braid aftermath into a long rope and make beds for your daughters out of it. sit on the terrace forming a circle around the moon. begin our hymns. i take up a violin i barely know how to make it sing. the strings ripped my fingertips and i bled through the prayers. once that was done, i had to pray again alone.

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