BLOOD EARTH

I DIVE

Would the slick embrace of the ocean swallow me whole and forget? Up here, the dampness stretches endlessly. Shopping malls, shooting ranges, and apartment towers lie sunken below—ghosts beneath the waves. A betrayed foam churns over the years we spent together, waiting to vanish beneath a sky no longer ours. Now torn to shreds. Backyards lost. Our blemished sun. The remnants of what we once called plantations. Cemeteries eroded to nothing, no names left to read. My brothers, their wives, their children's children—unmarked, eye to eye with the abyss. The ocean's surface: a thick stew of filth, rice grains, spit, petrol, and old blood. Yet somehow, I remain above it. Somehow, I am still whole. My throat raw like butchered cattle. My skin tanned to numbness, thick enough never to feel again.

I SWIM PAST OUR HOUSE

Where Dad and I used to wrestle. Where, every night for a week before the rains came, my mother took out her brand-new inset teeth—her first set shattered when a bird tried to dive straight down her throat. Where, in those final days, I woke up choking on grasshoppers, the ceiling splitting apart. Water poured from my ears. Snails turned up in my breakfast. Sores spread between my toes. I watched my father's face blur, losing its details by the hour. My mother sweated blood, staining sofa pillows, the fridge, painting new patterns on the wallpaper. The cat had learned to speak in some awful, unnatural tongue.

Unlike the others, I chose sleep. Now, drifting through, I kick down, trying to reach our old roof. But every time I dive, I fall just short—an arm's length away before my lungs seize, and I have to kick back, rising numb and breathless to the surface.

RESURFACE

Breaking the surface, I find the water's skin thick, unyielding. I fumble against it, my back pressing in. The water pulls, hungry to swallow me whole. The fine hairs on my upper lip quiver. My brain burns, gelatinous and fevered. I push harder, my blood surging, until I force a passage through the muck. My lungs scream—a flower blooming in reverse, collapsing inward.

Above, the sky looks like another surface, another reflection. In it, I see the water. And within that, I see myself—mud-covered, gasping. I watch myself watching myself, and we blink together, mouths open. I am older than I remember. Once, I shaved my head. Once, I had a child. We warmed store-bought milk in the microwave before feeding. He'd coo, suck, sputter. Sometimes, I feel him stretching inside me again, as if time has folded him back, unborn.

Other times, there is only color. I try to focus on my movements—skull, slump, scissor, doggy paddle. My muscles throb, aching with fever. My body sneezes, longing for something lost in a faraway summer. I will keep going. Until whenever.