Diary

Ants invaded the peony bulbs while under the vast face of sky, fireflies sent their signals. We lit sparklers and ran in joyous circles. Bedtime came and went. While in the world, napalm ravaged a jungle, and in our own South, dogs and water cannons spread their hate: that too, your childhood. No paradise: only time and its casual indifference through which you see the ravaging ants, their persistence.

Diary

You cling to the objects of your life: that bracelet, that vase, knowing there are no proper amulets for warm no talisman for damage control. Who are you to feel their lives so acutely as they wane on a Friday in March? Here the moist magnolia buds give off their fragrance. The blood tree grows elsewhere. You will need an axe.

Diary

The roof of the house once held it all in, talk at the table, whispers in bed. Rumors at night gathered in smoke-colored shadows, weeping in the wine cellar, whose thick walls cushioned the sound. A hole in the attic made songbirds lay their eggs in woven nests in the rafters, where seasons changed and trees budded in spring. The sky was their candled chandelier. No one visited for years. A weasel lived in the fireplace and mice overran the drawer still filled with candied fruit nuggets. The couple, who had bought the house when they were just starting their lives, had been gone since war made it unlivable. They had fled on foot with few belongings to a quiet farmhouse deep in the woods. No one would think of them there, where they had grown older waiting for the war to end. With their bread and cheese and sprig of mint and spring water, they made little offerings to the local saint, the one who blesses those who’ve disappeared.

Diary

Nature conspires to cool its heels as birds make for the border, a seasonal demarcation. Under old bones loamy earth digs in. Worms lace the soil until winter’s toolkit blurs the scene. Unlike the man who digs with his hands for his family lost in the rubble of war, we watch passively, nothing to surprise us as Cassiopeia winks on the evening. Weeping ensues in the burnt-out ruin of the place he calls home. The world’s weight crushes us all in the end, exposing the horror that satellites send over the nimbus, mutes the voices of those whose place on earth has no migratory rights, just the bone-white stillness of harm beyond seasons.

Diary

At the flea market, the goat with the rectangular pupils, hidden under her straw hat, has already half-eaten it. The man who sells dahlias and always says merde lets her leash drop as she samples the neighboring vegetable booth’s sweet, earthy carrots. It’s everyone’s day—even the sun standing its ground behind those filmy cloud layers. Calm is wafer-thin, a filament of agreement printed on signs, my body, yours: no right to encumber anyone’s peace on such a day.