Elsa Han & Navya Chitlur: “spark (to be incinerated again)”

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spark (to be incinerated again)

by Elsa Han & Navya Chitlur
11/8/24

my threadbare body lays in the dirt of the fallen;
i am draining the brown of my skin into the pacific ocean
& my palms reach for the safety once birthed in a hospital
before a woman became a stairwell anchored to the sand
& before we were told that to live was to bleed.

mourning is the aftermath of the loss of our bodies
tombstones and undead hands clasped in prayer
the youth kindle their voices to scream over burning bricks
they raised the glass ceiling only so our ashes can’t touch it.

a penny of lead weighs a quarter pound. forced on my tongue,
it is enough for heavy poison to seep in and leak out until the world
is made from deadly silence and a mother’s bloodline is a curse.
hope is an illusion with battered wings:
she falls and cannot rise again.

paper crane wishes line my closet like skeletons
our screams are whispers & we are burning witches again
but if we are dark magic then i will tie myself to the stake
& will remain there, starved to the bone, until we are free

motherhood is the dust of leaves under black boots.
i am watching this criminal on a screen teach me
how to carve a toy out of the body of a girl
& wishing i could curl my tongue into words i spill from knuckles
before the land left only man, white, and escape in death

i will breathe between decaying bodies at state borders
tumbleweed rot rolls down windpipes and empty lungs
smoke coats skyscrapers until red eyes cannot find stars
sunny afternoons are no safer than midnight streets.

i am born from the salt of the pacific cradling my open wounds.
her apologies spill over in brilliant sunset, and she tells me
to fight and to be safe and to live, and it takes everything
to not fall kneeling in glass-speckled sand and beg for something
to grasp onto, so i don’t have to tell the little ones i’m sorry.

i’m sorry we have scattered our words to the winds