Land’s distance.
Walking where the mouldy village
rests rawly against the hills,
the charred ruins of sun.

Corpses smoulder past my night.
The wind hurls the ashes of the present,
to settle in the corners of my skin.

I walk back, 
drugged,
between old, ill parents.
Around me, my squalid town,
the long-haired priest of Kali
who still packs stolen jasmines
into a goddess’s morning eye;
a father’s symbols:
the door I am afraid to close.

It is an exile.
Between good and evil
where I need the sting of death.
Where a country’s ghosts
pull my eyes toward birth.
It is an obscure relative I’ve never seen.
Every time.
The duty of carrying my inconsequences
in Father’s house.
It is there in my son’s eyes up the tree.