Sonam Chhoki

The Botany of Dreams

Again, I descend to the moss-blackened lake, a motionless slab in the full moon. I place the sacred vase carefully on a ledge of rock but cannot find matches to light the incense. I am filled with fear of offending the family gods. Then, a voice I recognise as my father’s calls out.

He beckons me to a jagged promontory. Staring across the gulf I feel it is not space that I am drawn into but the vast expanse of time, at once immediate in the instant and boundless without end. Something in me frees itself and falls away.

anniversary . . .
the perfidious joy
of field flowers