Aerial Roots, Sacral & Sleepless by Riya Rajesh
Aerial roots
Stepping barefoot
over the threshold
Carrying the outside world on our
storied soles
My blood knows this line
between home and street
Treats it as sacred before my mind senses
why
do we step over thresholds? I ask my father,
breathing evenly in the dark
Shadows glancing through buttery curtains
Knowledge not lost
but buried in the soil of our beings
Filling our warm mouths with its life,
rich and heady, staining teeth
While the green lizard's gentle ghost
scurries up the wall,
peaking tender eyes from behind
the clock
Slow ticking reverberating
through his small, jittery body
Hands moving together, in time
you'll know
we called her amma
Today the dusty pink walls cushion her absence
House of slow-clotting flesh, healing shut
An open wound grasping for the other
side. Seeking
mangrove roots over sticky, red floor
River - a passage between realms
I step and bow my head
Rising up
to greet the stubborn tulasi
Growing unwatered in defiance on its alter
Carrying in each firm stem
the familiar line of your mouth, Indira Bhai
River - a passage between realms
I step and bow my head
Sacral
You are so tired of dreaming
today, Oracle
Sitting in an oyster shell, waiting to be
shucked and left
iridescent
Sifting through,
each night, what's real
And always what isn't
The blade, a place for your reflection
You're dragged along the currents,
rope in hand
Pinning REM cycles down like
twitching
wings
Drifting, in a place we know
as the bowl of consciousness
A phrase taught by vacant hands
slowly circling your low, waistband
Please, reel
me in with a story then
Tell me anything, child of the waves
When has language ever failed us?
Lying here amongst the coral and sand
It's conversation that saves me again
It's the act of looking up,
too deep to know which way that is
Your mouth is worn today
The whole story is too much to explain
Be in silence here instead, light filtering through your eyelashes -
living curtains to the world
Sleepless
A bloody mouth around the carcass of a pomegranate
We are awake another night
There's a reason
why, right
There was a purpose
once
Of course, I say. A sense
of something greater,
pressing down on skin
We are creatures, bent over the same
childhood remains
One hand - deep in that chest cavity
For something warm
to taste
The other – gripping dirt and grass like
rosary beads
Awake again, night
In conversation with a decision
already made
a time ago, in fortune's eye
Falling inward
Stumbling
into the early morning
Pretending it isn't really
Pretending we aren't really
Lonely mouths around
the carcass of the right words
Producers
Amelia Smits
Executive Producers
Hayley Scrivenor
