9/20/24

New | Poetry | Jobeth Warjri

                                                              

Photo: Arshi Zama





When the Coffee Table is the Only Thing That’s Stationary


The only difference between us

is that you live in a house whose tentacles

I have coveted and wished to make my own

 

I break commandments 10/10 to avoid feeling lonely

stow away the broken parts among my clothes

then blame my mother for her audacity to glue

 

them back together into something sensible:

a heavy downpour during the monsoon, maybe.

Sometimes, a face stares out from the arterial roads

 

of a mirror above the bathroom sink

I choose to keep my head down for fear of what

might greet me through the countenance of possible futures

 

I nurture their unsightly stems in white pots

cast a fishing line into their rippling waters…

I look to my cats for the wisdom of living in the moment.

 

Permanence is something I cling to, in my own way:

I plant my feet across from you on our coffee table

 

with my back resting against a shaky plastic chair.

 

 


Absences


It is not that the curtains miss

the hand that pulls them apart

or the rim of a cup the

lips that drink its content

 

It is not that there is a depressed

space on the bed where the cat sleeps

or that the laundry folds in awkward

positions than what it is used to

 

It is this and so much more—

the rearrangement of thought, of body

around a territory filled with only air

the counting of things as they should be

 

the strangeness of what was home.


 


The Quiet

(for the women in Manipur)


You need to be quiet in order to write.

You need to hold the pauses between breaths

and exploit them for what you know they do not say

poetry is breathing when the musician plays a note

that just about touches the threshold of sound

and, in so doing, awakens the mind to silence.

 

 

Today, a woman mourns for her daughter.

You just about catch the wind in her cry

enough to hesitate calling it poetry.

 



The Nation is a Construct


It’s about the Spirit and in whose body it resides

I know this because father said so

 

our hands clasped together after fumbling

for words through onion-skin pages

 

we learned of Abraham whose descendants now

etch streaks across the desert to contain their souls

 

then I met you and thought, for a moment, how you

and yours proclaimed freedom over lands

 

within the borders of a woman whose

milk tasted of bitter turmeric and spices

 

you called her MATA, elsewhere an

acronym for keeping out undesirables

 

I dreamt of the progenitors of this law,

white and absolute in their claims to rule

 

so I asked who is this for: the earth,

the sky, the seas, the soil on which I stand?

 

maybe, being mortals, we place

limits to what is actually eternal.

 



The Paradox of Nothingness


To write about it would mean

to give to it what it is not:            

the magic swirl of letters across

a page that swallows universes

the many loops that mean only to

hang tender adjectives through a hole.

 

The Japanese have turned it

into an art eating under

pink blossoms that, decades

ago, adorned fighter jets.

These same petals shroud our air,

makes the quiet between us riotous.

 

We watch children release

its helium-filled symbols

into a dispassionate, blue sheet;

their curly lines receding into wind. 

While biographers among us arrest its

sense over and over with black ink.

 

We grow inarticulate

trying to capture its mood

among a singer’s lyric, claiming

her intonations as our own:

in the backseat of a car, her

heartaches are hers no longer.

 

Maybe, we could solve

its arithmetic by drawing 0s

where our breath should be

only that would imply life

imperilled though it may be

to the soul of a poem

 

that says and means nothing.



9/4/24

New | Fiction | Last Night | Changming Yuan



                                                                                                 

Photo by Inder Salim



Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for the both of you, “worth as much as one thousand gold coins,” as an ancient Chinese poet once said.

When you woke up around five o’clock, you were on cloud nine to find yourself in the middle of morning wood, a rare experience at your age. Without waiting a single second, you climbed on Hua before she had enough time to take off her underwear. As your pecker was no longer as thick, long and hard as in your youthful years, you had to take the classic position each time without any change. You told her that if you had had more sexual energy, you would have preferred to penetrate her either from behind or beneath her. After discharging all your remaining manhood into her body, you engaged in an endless round of after-play. While kissing and fondling her, you felt inspired to write a poem about yourself as a rain sparrow, as you had found Hua’s little garden to be the ideal nest for your soul and selfhood at the same time. While you kept wondering about the close interrelationship between sex and spirituality at the back of your mind, you couldn’t help wanting to share with her your most special sexual experience with your wife, which took place right before you moved to Canada as an international student.

“When was that?” asked Hua. 

“In 1989. I was thirty-two then,” you replied. “When Helen and I were treading water in Beidaihe, the most popular seaside holiday resort in northern China, I walked her far away from all others and put my dick inside her from behind in the sea without anyone noticing us.”

“That’s nothing if not crazy!” Hua remarked. “Ping would never have done anything like that.”

“I know he’s far less ‘crazy’ than me,” you observed. “So, which sexual experiences with me you enjoyed the most?”

After doing some thinking about this question, which was apparently intriguing to her, Hua began by telling you that she felt extremely excited when she took a joint shower with you, something she had never done before with Ping. As you caressed her slowly and softly from her neck to her feet, she produced so much juice that it felt as if it were dripping together with the water. Another very pleasurable thing you did to her, she said, was to search for her G-spot and keep stimulating it with your middle finger. Though Ping had once attempted to finger-fuck her in the past, she refused him resolutely, because she felt dirty and disgusted about his fingers. Also, she found it profoundly comforting and delightful to remain naked in your arms, saying that even on her wedding night, she slept under her own comforter after sex. Besides, all her life, she must wear a pajama during sleep. Each time after sex, she would put her underwear and her pajama back on, or she could never fall asleep, but sleeping totally naked with you turned out to be something not only possible but preferable. 



                                                                                                     

Photo by Inder Salim


 

 “What’s your most enjoyable experience with me?” you asked.

“The sex itself of course,” Hua said. “Except that I wish you would sometimes do it a bit more slowly.”

  You knew that you had done the pushing and pulling too fast, especially when you found it difficult to work up and maintain the hardness. You simply had to; otherwise, your waning sexual power would not allow you to retain your thrust. Now, in your late sixties, you might be a big sexual nuisance or burden to your wife because of her complete loss of libido, but with your little remaining sexuality, you could never satisfy Hua, because she was still perfectly functional like a full-fledged young woman.

“Sorry, like every other male in the animal world, I cannot really satisfy a female, especially a super libidinous woman like you,” you said, trying to give yourself a universally valid excuse. “How about Ping?”

  “He’s got nothing on you!” Hua said, her words sounding more like a condolence or encouragement than a real or well-grounded correction. “What are the different things you’ve done with me that you found most enjoyable?” she asked.

  In reviewing your sexual experiences with her, you recalled the fact that Hua was the only woman who had made you feel totally melted in the depth of feminine warmth and tenderness. Though you had slept with a few women before, you had never had such an experience. Nor had you ever kissed or bitten a woman’s bud before her. While this was something you had never even thought of doing to a woman, you were truly surprised to find that Hua’s hidden face was a beautiful sight to behold.

  “You mentioned this to me on our second night together, remember?”

  “Of course, but I want to reiterate it, because this is my biggest discovery not only about you, but about all women in general. Probably it is this secret feature that has made you so special, and so extremely attractive to me.”

“You’re kidding! How could you tell before you slept with me?”

“I’ve got a third eye, which allows me to see the dialectical relationship between a woman’s two faces.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, if a woman looks radiant or much younger than her real age as you do, that’s because she’s got a high libido and been well nourished by sexual love like a flower. Alternatively, if a woman has a handsome hidden face and is well-irrigated by sexual love like a root, she is bound to have much better looks than others or than her real age.”

“Another bunch of baloney! But I would say you’re a true-blue visual creature!”

“Yep, just as you’re a true blue auditory one!”


                                                                                                   

                                                                                                            

Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar


After your last turtle brunch, you helped Hua wash all the bedsheets and clothes, clean the whole condo suite room by room, and pack up her big suitcases mostly with toys for her two grandchildren and traditional herbal supplements for her husband. In the evening, you ate out in a small but busy restaurant adjacent to Fuhua Square and took a long walk around the area, where Hua used to do grocery shopping or run household errands before immigrating to Australia. Around nine o’clock, you visited Sugar Tang, a very popular food outlet selling all kinds of sweet soups. Knowing Zhujiaojiang to be the most nutritious soup for breast-feeding mothers as well as Hua’s most favorite local Cantonese dish, you asked her to order a big bowl for the two of you. While eating, Hua told you in detail how to cook it.

“It’s very simple. First, soak a well-cleansed pig’s foot in red sweet vinegar overnight, then stew it with ginger and boiled eggs in the vinegar for two hours.”

  “I’ll pass this recipe to Helen.”

“But no one could really learn it well. The taste here is unique.”

“Probably they have some special extra ingredient.”

  After returning home, you shut every curtain and have a long last joint shower. Before going to bed, you wanted Hua to perform a naked dance for you in her large well-lighted living room, but she shook her head firmly, saying it would be disgusting for a crone to do such a crazy thing. Besides, she had forgotten most of the movements. You insisted on her putting on minimum clothing and trying “the Blue Sky Dream,” a beautiful Tibetan dance which she had liked and performed best. Without any musical instrument available to you, you sang the song aloud in tune with her movements. When you entered the bedroom, she asked you to read a couple of poems you had written for her.

  To give her a sense of how it sounded in English, you selected two pieces from your published collection Limerence. The first is what you consider your best love poem, which reads: 

 

 Missing in Missed Moments


Each time I miss you

A bud begins to bloom

So you are surrounded by flowers

Everywhere you go


Each time I miss you

A dot of light pops up

So you are illuminated by a whole sky

Of stars through the night


After you paraphrased the two stanzas in Chinese for her, Hua said that though English poetry sounded Greek to her, she could nevertheless feel beauty and love flowing sweetly, slowly and softly between the lines as between the two of you. Then you read the following piece in a dramatic way:


To All That I’ve Lost Most Dearly


When I die at another antlike moment like this

No human crowds would gather to mourn my loss

Nor would anybody really notice my departure

Much less shed tears, even if because of the wind

I am sure trees will shake off their leaves; horses

Will stampede, raindrops will taste somewhat salty

Hills & mountains will all murmur in a muted voice

Above all, Zhuhai will weep under sagging clouds

For it well knows there will be no more human soul

On this planet trying to connect with the city as far

As from beyond the Pacific, so closely & constantly

With its myriad spirited fingers caressing every

Synapse of the neighborhood, the very building

Where you dwell, while poetry cannot help feeling

Empty as if its heart were hollowed by my absence


                                                                                          

Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar


Hearing your explanation of what you tried to express in the poem, Hua felt quite saddened. When you told her how the chief editor of a longstanding California-based poetry magazine actually cried after reading this piece, Hua shared her feelings, calling it “deeply touching.”

  “Okay, enough of high romance, let’s get down to our low business,” you suggested as you carried her into the bed, where you began by fondling her breasts. A few minutes later, you reached down and massaged her vagina in a playful way. Before becoming hard enough, you kissed her bud, gave it a good farewell bite and used your scissors to cut a lock of hair respectively from her head and secret garden. After you put them into a red envelop, which you planned to bring with you back to Canada, Hua kissed your birdie in return. Fortunately, it put up a good show as if to accommodate the occasion by flapping right into her nest, where you wished to perch forever.

“Now,” you said in a soft voice, “I understand why in Junichi Watanabe’s bestselling autobiographical novel A Paradise Lost, the narrator and his partner designed carefully to die together at the peak of their intercourse. Though their intertwisted bodies looked embarrassing to their undertakers, it was unquestionably their best time and the best way to leave this world.”

“Why?”

“Because death is the only way to eternalize their happiest moment.”

“But I don’t want to die that way.”

“Now I also understand, finally,” you continued, “why lovers in east Asian countries often commit double suicides when they lose all their hope of living together.”

“How do you account for this tradition?”

“Because death is the ultimate way to live together ever after.”

“You want us two to die together to eternalize our happy love?”

“Yes and no, but let’s enjoy it while we’re still alive and capable.”

After plenty of horizontal refreshments, you put your new silk underpants on her instead of yourself and asked her to sleep in it for the night.

“What for? I’ve never even tried a guy’s pants,” Hua said.

“Just to consecrate it, like a grand Buddhist master.”


                                                                                                       

Painting (Untitled) by Harshh Kumar



  Thinking that you had only 12 hours left before leaving each other, you felt both sad and grateful. Sad that you would have to wait for another whole year before you could find the chance for a physical reunion; grateful that despite your old age and difficult circumstances, you managed to have not only spent almost sixteen whole days together but enjoyed as many as nine soul-melting moments, chatting about everything without any reservation, making love with each other ad libitum.   

“Like you say,” Hua said. “I also feel as if I am falling in love for the first time in my life.”

“Indeed, each time I fuck you, I feel like I’ve never fucked a woman before.”

  “Have some decency!”

“But to you, and to you alone, I’ve lost all my decency and dignity as a man.”

“You’d better keep some for me, if not for yourself.”

  “People say a wise man does not fall in love, and only a fool is trapped by his feelings. If this is true, I’m really a big fool, a pre-ordained and incorrigible one.”

“But you are a wise fool, since you’re a PhD holder, a thoughtful writer and a widely published poet. Aren’t you happy to be such a wise fool?”

Of course you were. You didn’t know why, but together with Hua, you felt foolish and happy, just as you had done doing hard labor. While you brain seemed to have stopped functioning, your whole being was controlled by feelings, which allowed you to sense nothing else except happiness in love. Often you felt so happy so as to want to die at the moment of ejaculation. This way, you could immortalize your ecstasy, but now the impending departure from her overwhelmed you with a sense of sadness. Despite your plan to honeymoon on a yearly basis, you found the wait unbearable.


                                                                                                        

Photo by Inder Salim


  “I’m a migratory rain sparrow,” you said to Hua, as you interpreted for her the following poem titled “Swift” you had just finished:


    Above this wild wild world covered

          With layers and layers and layers

        Of red dust, my selfhood

      Has long been tired

    Tired of flying

  Flying alone

  Day & night


But where can I perch?

Do I have a nest at all?

 

  for a solid

  Respite before

    Continuing my lonely

      Flight, snuggling my inner-

        Most being in the heart of your

          Soul, and settling my weathered body

            Right at the A-spot of your tenderness


  Yes, you had found your permanent sexual-spiritual nest in Hua, but you had to keep yourself away from it for most of the time and accept the fact of her husband occupying your nest. Even though you could accept the fact that Ping was able to fuck her any moment and spend time with her openly anywhere, you were afraid that another rival could pop up from nowhere. Hua told you that she felt exactly the same. She could cope with the fact of you living together with Helen day and night, but she would never tolerate the idea of another woman playing a part in your life. To both of you, separation was a torture. 

  “But that’s the predestination for all extramarital relationships,” you thought aloud. 



***










7/31/24

New | Poetry | Anushka Bidani

Unfettered, Michael Moreth 


on knowing

someone asked what it was like knowing you,
and I hemmed and hawed for a while  and ended 
up saying - nice! Because I did not have the 
words then   (I still don't, really).

But if I had asked myself what it was like 
knowing you,                                     I would 
probably have said: like knowing a cloud.  
some days it rains and you feel equipped to say 
i know you, when   the answer should really be 
i know what it feels like to be touched by you. 






how to hold a knife 


to slice an apple into perfect, even slices. step i: cut through the centre. step ii: carve the core. step iii: place your thumb on the separation between the plastic and the blade and chop. chop, chop, chop. strike gently along each new border you draw, until you’ve flattened the earth alive. 


my mum has been trying to teach me how to hold a knife since i learned what a knife does. she says, all the pieces should always look the same. she says, one should not be able to recognize which slice came from the edges and which split from the core. i cut imperfectly. i carve perfect circles into messy halves. inevitably, jagged ruins burst from my knife. 


i say, everything falls apart once you bring it to your mouth. 


everything, falls apart.



Therapeutically, Michael Moreth




she’s leaving home 


nothing’s touched me as gently as the rain.

water soaking my shoes, droplets cascading down

my bare wrists i never flinch away from the rain 

but only what follows: adults descending upon us 

like the hungry maw of the sun wiping all the evidence

away. i welcome joy / every august evening, i commit

the same crime. i beg my way into the car with my parents

and i promise them that tonight, i won’t run away 

with the rain. 


i lie.


nothing’s loved me as brutally as a game of lawn-tennis in the pouring rain if love means to be shivering on a cement floor with bloodied knees at 8pm on a Thursday evening. after the match, all my criminal friends and i sit cross-legged on the wet ground awaiting judgement from the adults. puddles bite at my blue socks, cold winds nip my nose red. i lay down, hands under my head, ankles moon-cuffed to my racket. 


it keeps raining. 

it keeps raining. 

it keeps raining,

and we know nothing of death. 





Shazam, Michael Moreth



intoxication 


sweet-summer night, i stumble barefoot to my dorm-room window & smoke. wet face breaking through the warm wind; i wish it didn’t take so much to keep the earth spinning.


6/27/24

New | Short Fiction | Vikram Mervyn | How To Write: Lessons From A Frog, An Elephant, And A Manatee


 

Artwork by Harshh Kumar


 

Although you want to write something, you’re good like this. You’ll write anything really—a story so flimsy it may collapse any moment now, a poem that neatly balances on rhyme, a drawing claiming to be writing, an imaginary note about an imaginary elephant, something about a ghost, a phone number, a name (even your own), an illegible to-do list, a grocery list written in shorthand or puns, anything at all—all that’s true about what you desire, but the simple truth is you’re good where you are.

The ceiling fan spins above your head or inside it, and the recurring croaks mark each round the blades take; makes it easier to count. You haven’t done anything to the regulator, but the fan is old enough to spin at the right speed for the right breeze. The breeze smells like old rice. You haven’t eaten rice in two months.

The last time you ate rice you had Double Singapur Noodals because the waiter told you that this sort of noodles was a mix of rice and noodles. You thought you benefited double for just hundred and fifty so that’s what you ordered. When it came to your table you saw that the noodles looked like red hair, so you requested another plate, separated noodles and rice, and ate only the rice.

Remembering that now, you think of all businesses as vultures. They are bald headed thin birds. They feed on the dead. They want you dead. Small businesses are just small vultures which means a sleeker beak. You don’t want to bother your mind with all this. You want to write. You look up at the fan. You meditate on the rounds of the blades. One. Two. Three. Four. Sometimes when you’re sitting on the sofa, you like to pretend that the croaks of the fan are from a frog. You close your eyes. Fluorescent bars, perhaps from the afterglow of  tube light, flash before you as though they’re actually there. That’s  of no concern. You listen intently to the croaks. They are deep, and within them you distinguish smaller crackles, all arranged together giving the illusion of being a continuous rumble, a sort of growl. You wonder if frogs would produce roars if they were as big as lions.

This wondering, you think, this what-if-ing around, that’s my secret juice. You swallow some saliva, pretending it’s the secret juice. Your saliva is thick. It goes down like food rather than drink. This only helps your cause. This is the same as when you hear the click on a lock, or the switch of a button, or the pushdown on the Enter key on your keyboard. It tells you something’s about to happen. When you swallow that lump of saliva, its viscosity helps you know that now you’ve crossed the barrier to a potential world. You can now write. You listen to the clicks within those croaks, bobbing your left ear a few degrees this side. You tell yourself: these croaks are from the mouth of a frog.

 

#

 

You’re right because when you open your eyes, on the wooden stool kept for the wifi-modem, you see a frog. Although the frog isn’t as big as a lion, it’s only slightly smaller than you. Its skin is the color of dry leaves. Its eyes look like murky puddles. You make out a dark slit in that murky puddle. Over its eyes there’s fat glass. You’re barely able to distinguish glass  from its eyes.

“Can I have some water?” The frog says. “I’m very thirsty. I’ll need some for my skin too. Look, I’ve become so dry outside  water.”

“I thought you were amphibious,” you say, smirking.

“Yes, I am. But you seem to have me confused with the Toad, who prefers the land more than  water. That’s not the case with me. I’m a creature of water. Now, if you will please get me some water,” The frog says, coughing on to its webbed hands.

You examine the frog, looking it up and down. You look at its toes curling into themselves. You watch its meandering eyes, staring at you,  from your nose to your mouth to your eyes and back to your nose. It sits weakly, crunching its frail chest. It curves its back into its belly; its arms hug its knees, and its feet barely want to be on the ground. To you, it seems the frog will turn into a ball any moment now.

The frog is right: its skin is very dry as must be its throat, but you find that a small flame of rage from behind your sternum would like beating down on the frog, bullying it, dissecting its desires, imagining all the things it could do with a knife to the frog’s neck, to its eyes, to its soft belly, and to its frail chest.

“I’ll bring you water,” you say. “If you’ll tell me how to write.”

“Sir, please. I’m only a frog. I don’t know how to write,” the frog says, gasping. “I don’t know how I got here but leave that! Here I am! Please, I’ll just need some water! Please bring me some water…”

“How to write?” you ask, looking elsewhere, disinterested, or at least pretending to be. What you want from this refusal of eye-contact is for the frog to know that it has no option but to tell you how to write.

“Alright, alright, alright,” the frog wails. “Let me think. Let me think!”

The frog wipes away its tears with its fingers. You’re reminded of toothpicks when you look at its fingers. Or perhaps knitting, because of the webbed skin in between the fingers, you tell yourself. The frog gasps, holding its stomach, clutching it so that its flesh bulges out like jelly. You observe the frog’s breath growing calmer, slower, like a fan coming to a stop. Its clutch is no longer strong. You see acceptance. The frog looks up at you. You see moisture on the fat glass, and on its face, you see the twitching remains of a strong frown.

“So, sir, if you want to write,” the frog says. “I’d suggest you write about Memories.”

There’s a glint in your eye. You lean towards the frog.

“What do you mean by that?” You say.

“Sir, as a frog, I don’t have a very good Memory,” says the frog. “Of course, perhaps I am not the animal with the worst memory, but mine is pretty bad.  Since Literature’s work is to illuminate us, I suggest you write about Memory. Now, may I please have some water, sir? Please?”

You lift a finger up to the frog’s face: just a minute. You pull out your phone and type into Google “can frogs remember,” and Google says, “learning and memory: certain frogs have been shown to have the ability to learn and remember.”

You cackle.

“Your species has just now shown the ability to remember!” You say, spitting a big lump of saliva on the frog. The lump lands on its right shoulder, and you can tell the frog is relieved from the wetness of the spit. You go to the kitchen, bring a magenta bottle from the fridge, and throw it at the frog. The bottle hits the frog’s eye and falls on the floor. The bottle  pops open and water gurgles out as though bottles have the capacity to burp.

“I want to write about the Coming World,” you say, looking up at the fan. “You won’t understand all this.”

“I don’t remember exactly, but meet the elephant,” the frog says slurping, rolling, and frolicking on the spilt water. “It’s in the balcony.”

 

#

 

Your balcony has many plants. Gardening is a habit you’ve picked up from your aunt. You know your aunt can’t have children, which is why she has plants—a bougainvillea creeper growing over the terrace ledge, a guava tree, a slim neem tree, a young mango tree, a banana tree that rejuvenates every time its chopped, a jasmine creeper at the back, and a lone rose flowerpot.

            Your balcony is small. It can barely accommodate the bougainvillea. Your garden has six money plants, three big snake plants, a bonsai (you’re conflicted whether the bonsai process is cruel or not), and two monsteras.

Your single-plant cactus collection is on the left. The only plant in the collection is a Mexican Snow Ball, which is a succulent. You were told last week by a friend that all cactuses are succulents, but not all succulents are cactuses. You’re reminded of the vultures that businesses are. Leave all that, you tell yourself. Where’s the elephant?

When you look at your cactus collection, you find two plants. The second plant looks like a sea urchin. It’s a maroon ball about the size of a guava. The skin is dry, and miniscule hexagonal patterns repeat, row after row. You could get lost in it if you stared for long. Or perhaps if you held it tight in your hand the patterns will drown you.

How? You don’t know. But you know if you held it, it will drown you, so you only touch it. The skin twitches. You jump back. The ball unravels to expose a trunk as thick as your little finger, four bent legs, and two paper thin ears. Ah! you think, that’s the elephant!

“What do you want?” the elephant says.

“I met the frog, and it said I should meet you if I wanted to write,” you say. You omit the part of the conversation regarding the Coming World and Memory. You don’t want to tarnish whatever the elephant may say.

“What can I offer you?” the elephant says.

“Advice,” you say.

“Advice?” the elephant says. “Look, sir, all I can tell you is this: write only about what is to come. Hope for things or be anxious. Dream, or dread the doom to come, but write only of what is yet to happen.”

The embers behind your sternum come alive, as though someone is blowing on dead coals. Now you have a small flame inside your ribcage. You want everything the elephant has to offer. You won’t spare it until it has exhausted itself.

“I want to write about the past,” you say.

“I remember everything,” says the elephant. “I have been reduced to the size of a mouse because Memory has eaten up the rest of me. Even now, it sits on the cornea of my eye, and on my spine, latched onto my tail, my toes, everything! It slowly nibbles at me and my mind. I would not advise that you bring Memory into your books!”

“That’s exactly what I want to do,” you say. “So, tell me everything you remember.”

“No,” the elephant says. “I don’t wish to bring my state upon anybody else. Look at me. I’m now a statue. I cannot move. I have become the Past, the dead itself. So if you will give me anything at all, even a ray of the Future, of possibility, I will give you a little bit of what I will remember.”

“Tell me the thing you remember first,” you say, smirking.

The elephant’s skin twitches, this time in ripples, as though there is only water beneath its surface. Its ears sway back and forth. The elephant opens its mouth and lets out a pearl. The pearl rolls off the ledge on which your cactus collection lies and falls to the ground with a clink. You squat and pick it up, but the tips of your index finger and thumb sizzle. The skin on your fingers produces a thick, white tower of smoke. The smell from either your fingers or the pearl (you don’t know) is so pungent you begin to cry. At first, a small teardrop rolls off your cheek and falls to the ground. You feel a big mass on your chest, pushing outward, against your sternum, your ribs, your lungs, and your small flame. You feel as though the elephant is standing upon you. The mass flows about your organs, burning everything in its way. You feel your throat churning, and unless you puke you will cry. You open your mouth. A yellow cascade of things fly out and fall on the floor.

When you’re done, you begin to weep anyway. You hold your face in your hands. You let out sounds ranging from whimpers to wails. Your palms and fingers are wet. You feel your knees and calves trembling. Your chest is hollow. You look at the elephant.

“The only possibility available to you is death!” You spit your words.

“Thank you,” the elephant says.

You leave before the elephant can continue.

 

#


You want to piss so you go to the toilet. As a child, you were scared that the commode was a shark and that it would bite your bum. Now you know you can sit there safely. Here the air is stale, still smelling of rice, but also of Dettol, detergent, and emptiness. You flush once you’re done, put on your pants and zip up.

“Sir, come towards me,” a voice to your left says. You jump up in a start. You almost fall, but the floor isn’t wet. On your left, a manatee is sleeping. It is big enough to occupy the whole bathroom except for the section where the commode stands; you only have enough space to open the door and piss.

“Who are you?” you ask, fed up by now of creatures jumping at you.

“I am a Manatee,” the manatee says.

“What do you want?” you ask, moving as far away from it as you can. You can feel your heart thumping on your throat and its echoes are heard at the back of your head and behind your ears.

“Nothing, sir,” the manatee says. “I have been hearing all your conversations with the frog and with the elephant, and I understand you want to write?”

“Yes,” you say, since that’s all you’ve wanted, to write anything at all.

“Ah, but I see you’re scared,” the manatee says.

Your forearms are drenched in sweat. Your heart hasn’t sunken back to the chest, it seems stuck in your throat. You attempt to quieten your mind, rid it of any thought, but that’s only making it noisier, louder, the mind grows more pregnant with thoughts. You feel your head bulge and subside, bulge and subside, as though it is the waves on a beach; it pulsates. You look at the manatee.

It’s a large creature. Its skin is blue or turquoise, or something in between; all you know is that it matches the walls of the bathroom. This is perhaps why it wasn’t even noticeable; you think. Its eyes are tiny holes in its head. Small tunnels that lead deep into its mind. The body is segmented at many places, but that’s only the folding of fat. The fat manatee looks like it’s been constructed from playdough, put together by some child… Like this, you articulate what’s in front of you to yourself, you can see the flooding of thoughts subside into a mere stream. The pulsating on your head and behind your ears has become bearable now; it sounds like a distant radio; only a rhythm.

“Leave whether or not you’re scared of me,” says the manatee. “Let’s talk about what you want. You wanted to know how to write?”

“Yes,” you say, still calming yourself, one breath at a time.

“Let me tell you,” the manatee says. “Complex answers are never answers. My answer is simple. Writing is simple. You must simply write. That’s all.”

You find the answer satisfactory. The answer is simple, you think. To write, one must simply write. Unknowingly, a smile grows on your face. Watching you, the manatee moves its whiskers, exposing its grin.

“Ah, I see you’ve understood what I’ve said,” the manatee says. “But, sir, don’t be deceived, the biggest chasm of all is the one between intention and action: what one intends, one doesn’t do. And the digger of this chasm is none other than fear!”

You shut the commode top and sit on it. You hang your head in relief. You sigh, and take a deep breath. This time when you swallow, the saliva is liquid, like sweat. Now you can write if you can handle the fear.

“Let me teach you how to handle fear,” the manatee says. “Just step forward and give me some pats on my head, sir.”

You smirk. You hold a finger to the manatee: just a minute. You google it: “can manatees be dangerous?”

“No, manatees are not dangerous,” says Google.

You sigh and stand up. You put your hand on the manatee’s head, and smile. The skin is cold to the touch. Its hairs prick your fingers lightly, like when you run your hand across a folder full of crisp paper. The manatee grins, pushing its whiskers to either side. You run your hand back and forth in the fashion of petting a dog or a cat, that’s when the manatee flicks its head backwards and snaps off your arm. Blood sprays everywhere. The manatee inches forward towards you, slithering as best as it can. You kick it in the snout, and shut the door on its nose. You run out.

You scream until the air around has dried your throat. You can only flail one arm since the other is spraying blood. Your legs tremble. Somehow, they feel like water or air, or perhaps like light, you don’t think they can support you. You’re on the sofa. Since you can’t trust your legs to hold your weight, you collapse on the sofa. You try not to look at your arm, or the absence of one. You shut your eyes and attempt to listen to the fan blades croak.

The breeze smells of rice. You hear the fan like it’s far away. It is croaking. Is it the frog, you think. No, stop. You count the rounds of the blades anyway. One. Two. Three. Four.

 

#

 

 You open your eyes to the wifi-modem’s lights blinking. The light for the internet is dim, unclear whether there is any internet at all. The fan’s blades spin slowly, croaking. You examine the dust at the edges of the blades. You remind yourself to clean the house. You saunter to the balcony. All six money plants, three big snake plants, a bonsai (what to do now that you’ve bought the bonsai, might as well care for it), and two monsteras are there. The cactus collection holds only one plant: The Mexican Snow Ball. You look out at the streets. The flies about the money plants and the cars moving far away are the same size. When you open the bathroom, your heart’s thumping stops completely, you doubt if you’re dead. You examine the mirror. You clean your left nostril. Below the mirror, there are two toothbrushes, a crushed Colgate tube, and a pink razor. You look at yourself in the mirror and sigh. How to write, you ask yourself. You frown at yourself: congratulations, you have written nothing.

 

 END