What Remains
After Marie Howe
At first, the floss picks seemed perfectly harmless.
They lay inside the bathroom cabinet, near the brush stand.
Then I began to notice them all over the house,
at night in the kitchen slab, or filling up the empty spaces
of the refrigerator. They fell from behind the picture frame
and kept falling for a while, the one in which the woman in
abstract brush strokes look like me, the one gifted by my brother,
who lives far away — movements almost sinister and scary,
I left the room and bolted it shut. Suddenly, I found them
in the washing machine socket where detergent is supposed to go.
Once, I found a handful of them in the hollow
of my acoustic guitar, and one night, under my pillow cover on the pillow,
I felt something like a pin pricking the upper eyelid of my left eye and pulled it out
I could not bring myself to throw it as leaving it as it is would cause me harm,
I put it in my pocket and slept. Soon after that I began to collect them,
in poly bags after bags, filling up even the big polythene bag
which held the smaller ones, till no bag was left at home.
I found them when looking for socks
or rubber bands which I kept losing. I wanted to throw them out,
but how could I get rid of something which I had spent so much time collecting
and thinking about? Every time I found one, it felt like I found a treasure.
It occurred to me finally that I was meant to use them, and I resisted
a growing compulsion to floss that one tooth jutting out, out of place,
and pick on it with the pointed end till it bleeds and aches so I would require
Zerodol after Zerodol and be forced to go to the dentist who I’m sure
will tell me to go for a root canal, although in moments of great distraction,
I thought it was to puncture for the white of my eye, or to perforate an ear drum
— exhausted, in monsoon, I laid them out on the front porch.
The rain fell quite as usual, without any apparent hesitation
or discomfort. River embankments of the Imphal river broke
carried away homes, flooded the town, flooded the ground floor
of my house and we were stranded in our own home without drinking water
and electricity, we were evacuated on boats.
Below flood lay my floss sticks heaped to a small mountain. Flood receded
full only after a month and half. They were gone, my floss sticks.
What remained was the slimy earth and smell of mould. The plastic pieces
alive elsewhere, stuck in gills of fishes, in the nose of kids swimming in ponds,
one stuck horizontal in a young tree trunk will become a part of it, embedded
in it ring after ring, like Don Puz’s bicycle tree of Vashon island, only less visible.
I am the Current That Guides the Ashes of the Dead
from the mang of Khwai Brahmapur Nagamapal,
on the banks of Nambul.
in the heart of Imphal city
completing the living’s journey
into the non-living.
It is always a buzz here.
Before the lazy-sun rise,
dutiful Imas come,
I can hear them.
Long after the sun sets, drunk men
stumble home,
some tumble on the road,
curling into sleep,
snoring like the sand mining drills
on the shores of Sekmai turel.
Between human noises and machines,
a sudden wail,
that’s my cue.
Gut-wrenching screams,
as if tears could reverse time,
as if screams could bring
the dead back.
I wait.
I hear fire catching and crackling.
I hear the people dispersing.
I hear bones popping.
I hear ashes becoming.
They plunge into me.
I teach the ashes how to sink,
where to settle,
how to become riverbed
from where thick swathes of kouna rise,
from where it spreads.
I guide some towards
the banks, the flood plain
where bamboos grow
and grow and grow.
I tell some to go through the arduous
journey of ingestion by ngaton, ngahou
passing through their gills
aiding them
Some ash, I guide, to enter
the mouth-folds of kongreng
whirling into pearls.
Everything continues.
And everything alters.
I remain,
time, passing through me.
Geosmin
The moment the knife
opens the beetroot naked,
your olfactory lobe is hit
with a whiff
of dust mixed with the season’s first
drops of rain, pure
— petrichor.
Your fingers are stained deep pink.
You take the trimmed off root-end,
rub on your lips, the pink root ink,
there you go - natural lipstain.
You slice it round, drizzle some oil,
add some salt, put it in a bowl,
you get your salad,
fresh crunch like a ballad,
when you bite and chew.
Your taste buds take a new
birth. It tastes like earth.
Breakfast Time
I killed
a cockroach last night,
after much searching for one.
They are not running around the house anymore.
It’s winter. I found one
in the cupboard below the kitchen sink
housing the pipe,
in their bed of mould and fungus
which always comes back
even after persistent cleaning.
I killed her to feed
my fussy eater of a daughter.
A dead cockroach is a breakfast sorted.
She fears cockroaches,
she likes them,
pronounces it tortoise.
I placed the dead cockroach in our room.
Breakfast time,
my daughter screams
‘tortoise tortoise.’
She is excited,
entertained.
She picks up my slippers
and goes on a killing spree
Phaak thao, phaak thao. Hit it.
She hits the slippers on the marble
missing the cockroach,
phaak, phaak, phaak.
It’s dead, do not hit it, I say.
It’s moving, she says
in her voice new to words.
I feed her a bite of tan.
She chews mindlessly
with no complaint,
eyes on the cockroach.
A leg moves.
Poor thing suffered the whole night alive.
I hit it with a killing
phaaak.
And two more times
to be sure.
Dr. Susma Sharma Gurumayum is a poet from Imphal. She is an Assistant Professor in History. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Tiffinbox Review and others. She won the Reuel International Poetry Prize (Special Mention) in 2021. Penthrill published her first poetry book, In Finite Days to Come (2021).