quinoa

Transcript:-

A haunted house

The house's slumber is fitful, stretching on for years when it hears a knock. My tired timbers groan when I do and I think I am alive again. Each door of mine is a mouth as all of them yawn open to swallow the knock.

A dolled-up girl walks into my chambers. I begin to show her what she wants to see. Blooming sunflowers by the kitchen window, beams of light outrunning each other to sink into the sofas. I trap her giggles and hope in the third drawer of the white vanity in the door painted red. I show my love for her through locked doors and broken necks.

The haunted house hangs between life and death. I am not alive but I am not dead. I see late afternoon light shining on the kettle in the kitchen and my floorboards creak to smile.

Your eyes sway like the drunkards with pot bellies, wagging their bottles after a brawl at their local pubs at night. On nights like these I let my secrets slip by, just till the lace of your robe which falls below your knees. The house is infested with desire. I am afraid to be alone.

If you were to dissect me you would find a throat, a spine, a heart, some eyes, and sharp teeth. The bedroom door is my churning stomach, the kitchen is my throat with a jugular, waiting to be feasted on. My heart is on each of the windowsill, ready for you to ravage it. Oh I love you I love you I love you darling till the point of mutual destruction. What will survive of us is hunger. I want nothing more than to swallow you alive.

The house plants

I collect them like seashells. A few of them are seeds hiding between the muddy soil which find a home in my nails when I bring them in. I hope to mould myself the way I did to the soil in the pots, some which escaped from a lover's quarrel thrown onto the streets. The leaves lie down on my porch like the ladies from a renaissance painting, their eyes on me and their right hands supporting their heads. I begin to mould myself like a plant. When I forget to water myself, my plants dry, I forget to tend to my roots and they wail. I am buried and I feel at home. Winds blow in and my frozen carcass is found at their feet. I bloom every year, as someone new over and over again. Burying is an eternal cycle. They thrive at the farthest corner of the house with a light in it. I think I'll give them enough love to make them survive.

god doesn't want me to bury myself

The ground is cool against my ears when I dig for broken and bloodied tongues that mix with soil when I try to lure them out. They hide like the off-whites hide in each bone while playing with the irony of being visible yet hidden. The tongues of my ancestors, along with imprints on rocks and soil. The fossils come out to dance each night, both humans and animals. Their melodies of bones clash and vibrate while soft chips erupt from a bird's ribs while the dinosaur's roars glide in harmony with the skulls. The rest of the night plays out the same way, a looped celebration of freedom and death.

I bury a time capsule with my eyes in it. Along with the paper-like memories. I find the imprints of another life. Hands that held each other with love staining their fingertips by people who thought they would be a mere memory in someone's mind. I think I too will be remembered in another life.

God doesn't want me to bury myself. God sends an angel down to help me. Someone who looks like they're in their mid-twenties. A leather pants enthusiast, who holds an unlit cigarette between his lips and his first two fingers. Holding a magazine in one hand and my throat in the other. He says he's here to help. He weaves me through his pants and deems me shiny enough for his new design. He buries my memories of everyone first. That way it is easy to run to his home of leather and cigarettes. Maybe this world is all. All-consuming but never all-knowing.

Maybe we will wake up singing and dancing around a fire the next time I see you.

I drink from solace and taste delirium on my fingertips

The first time I drink from solace, in a goblet adorned with rubies and pearls (oval-shaped like the ones my mother wears) is when I am six. Me and my cousins, we lay in the arms of the moon, our bodies sunken into each crater and pushed into a happiness that borders on delirium with the shadows of my mum and aunt looming over us as they speak of other worlds they ran from, at night when half the world runs and the other half drowns.

Our eyes run before falling into a trot when they point toward the glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and an astronaut draped on the moon. We laugh and gasp and wonder about the worlds far away and when our mouths are open, they move aside the laughter that sticks to their fingers like honey to the insides of our cheeks and places the bitter yet sweet hope under our tongues, telling us to get used to its taste from now.

I drown in that particular memory for years. It is facile to do so when you are curious and gluttonous about the past. When you dig deep in hunger only to strike gold, you find it painless to lick the mud off your fingers to haul it. It is always easy to find comfort in memories, beings who are as tall as my family. The memory of my father taking me out to a restaurant, a stout 6'1 man. The memory adorns itself in square-shaped glasses and short black hair. The memory of my first time with solace takes multiple forms, one being a dainty 5'7 woman who is docile yet is kind enough to trap your soul with the juice of oranges. Another woman takes the form of a 5'5 memory. One of short stature as she runs along with her niece to hide from her sons.

They hold me with the solace that flitted away from me like the orange butterfly I saw when I was talking to the short ones. The one which ran back into their arms, having me chase for it for years. I think that all this time it was easy to find solace. It is easy to find solace when it had been hiding behind my mother and aunt all these years in the same manner as a shy child, only to come out when they speak of those far away worlds to me.

god is countable and braids my hair at 11:30 pm every night

I

My mother braids my hair every night, weaving purity and flowers of jasmine into it. She twists and pulls and eats up my reminders for her to be gentle. I lick the desperation off my fingers, mixed with the chilly curry made for dinner. It spreads like poison (an old friend), one which saunters into my bloodstream and makes love to the blood cells. The sun withdraws her rays from my face only for the moon to throw out beams upon everything, I want to be loved the way the moon loves each brick.

II

I speak to god and I grieve and wail at him about what I want.

I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN FOR THEM TO LOVE ME. I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN FOR YOU TO LOVE ME.

god is now a countable noun. He resides in my closet, seated on a black shirt of mine which says "I think about you sometimes" and during the nights at 11:30, he braids my hair on the days when my mum sleeps early. God follows the woman and weaves flowers of jasmine, this time interweaving the desperation ("I do not want it to be mine" I say. "You have no other choice" says god) and weaves it into my body. With god by my side, I think I am helpless now.

III

Since childhood, I have wanted to be loved, in a way where flowers bloom from my ribs to my fingertips (I hope they were jasmines). With each petal clasping a suppressed trait of mine that would erupt in full bloom the moment I am completely loved. There is so much of everyone in me that I hold my heart in my hands and teach it and god on how to love. Even when I am distant from being loved by everyone. At night, the person from the mirror sits by my bed. She speaks of being loved and held, one where her face is not struck with blood when she asks for it. She loves me more than I love her. She flees me with a tight hug and a promise to wait for the swaying trees to fall on my side. I walk with god behind me and with one craving. I want to be wanted more than anything in the world.