Sampurna Chattarji: Comes/Becomes
The courage that comes from the fiery liquids we toss into the blood.
Some evenings she remembers the etching of brambles on the skin of an alien sky.
Blue fish, blue bicycle, red hand.
Black Maria, black widow, red eye.
Melt me down, the voices say, in the innermost of her fears.
Meanwhile, the kestrel becomes a cormorant, the book in her hand becomes the encyclopedia of birds, her bangle a circle of red, knotted thread.
The ladder that climbs to the water tank, the possible precipice of an oil flare.