Boon
I had mistaken the breeze
for powder on the tongue,
grape fizz from elementary
school, and the scattered laughter
of a loose kid bunching sand
in a fist, releasing it dyed
in the air, a do-it-yourself holi
gift, meant to be sacred, placed
in secular airspace, but a child
doesn’t care does she?
To her the whole world
is a balloon rich with holy
raisins and light.
I mildly wonder how can I get
back to that? To live now
is to live like this, in the tender
metal electricity of things burned,
on their way out, desiccated
down to an uninnocent powder.
I was with the Virgin Mary
last night, at her grotto I
kneeled, gave everything
to her roselle lips, to the simple
blue ribbon at her waist.
I am living in the sin of gloom
I said, I am continuously forgetting
the bliss of God, no remembrance
remembers me so I’m screwed.
I saw, then, in the corner behind
her, inside a commonplace hall
with fans blessing the tropics
such an ordinary memory of
you and I bending down on
wood, thinking our best days
were coming, that now we have
seen the colours of stained glass,
the lightless days were snuffed out
like the expected ending of a grotto
tealight. Well, my Mary, my Mother,
it is an indecent sunset where
I breathe alone on the pews,
looking out at the horrendous
gorgeousness of a bold kingfisher
out for its next dip—isn’t that the holy
secret? We only ever need
to go for the next dip, and the next?
These evenings, the bounteous monsoon
rains are doing your work:
twilights are filled with anointments
through every wail and every tear,
the rains do their cleaning.
I am alone, I open my fresh, kid arms
to death, knowing it to be your making,
the beating out of a blessing.
Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian author. Her first novel, Yalpanam, was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021. Her poetry collection, Being Born (Maya Press) and her book of fiction, What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?: Two Novellas (Clarity Publishing) came out in 2022.