Sampurna Chattarji: How a horse grows into anxiety
How a horse cell grows into a horse
is perhaps easier answered than how a horse-
laugh grows into an avalanche of assault. Or how being horse-
whipped only makes a child grow into a mule.
There is a science of laughing, which perhaps answers acutely
all questions of anxiety: did I laugh too loud, did she find my teeth horsy,
and perhaps tracks the growth of laugh-lines on the fertile ground
of your face. When skin loosens from bone like loose-jacketed oranges,
there is no reason to laugh. The smell of orange-peel encases the room
with well-being, inside are the doubts which we will spit out like seeds.