yachaj

if i return here, i'll die (2008)

He wrapped me in air of
tobacco and chugri-yuyu, 
ancient cure of smoke and leaves, 
and sucked the spirits from my skull.
His wife washed their baby by the fire
while her husband stood captive of his own
buzzing magic, electric in the air.
He had small despotic eyes and
wore army fatigues unbuttoned, 
a tattooed cross across his chest. 
He was drunk
like every man en la selva.
He said he wanted his daughters
to see a city someday.

(And outside the girls played beneath
the wandu bush, braiding the
deadly flowers into
each other’s hair, the white
weaving trancelike onto
their shoulders. They asked me 
the price of everything: 
shoes, necklace, plane ticket. 
I tried to explain what the sea was. 
Como el río, pero lleno de sal,
lleno de peces grandes. Lleno de
bellenas y caracoles y barcos.
I wondered how they imagined
these whales and snails and ships.)

He stood nearby
picking orange ahi, the pepper smell
sharp in the thickening air. 
With a glance to the trembling sky
he sent me suddenly on my way.
I sat in prayer pose in the damp canoe,
and his white-dressed daughters waved goodbye.
Their laughter was steeped
in the sorcery of their father,
the supai and samai bubbling forth,
bird-demon giggles leaping and 
darting across the ragged water.

One called,
¿Quieres volver a la selva?
The wind moaned and I yelled, 
Espero que sí, but I thought,
If I return here, I’ll die.

That day, before the storm,
the girl chalked my name
on their sun-greyed walls
while her father rocked in the hammock
cradling his newborn.
She told me to stay.
He told me to go.
I do not know which I chose.

But in the winter 
will come the rains,
and the water will pour
through the tin roof
down the wood walls
through the floor slats
onto the chickens below.
By spring
they’ll have my name
in their feed.  

.

Image: Rithika Merchant, ‘Inner Sanctum’ (2022)