translating India
every move is a message
a tilt is an affirmation
a lift is an invitation
the syntax of gesture is dense
I have coloured in a path
between my heart and my third eye
and it expresses itself up my arm in henna
India is taking me apart and moving through me
I am inhaling the cremated
injesting trails of kin and caste
coated in a dust that’s carrying:
this crumbing temple,
that tilled earth,
hair of camel, defecation of cow, saree sweat, spit, urine, incense, sugar, spice…
it’s all a mixing vapour, moving osmotically through me—
the holy and the horrific
the putrid and the magnificent.