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you said be ready
I wasn't ready for this.

to death

the last time
I lost you

I found myself
feverishly saving stories
of how many people
died that day
and how

I would
flip through them
eyes burning
hands trembling
GREEDY
tasting them
with relish
seething envy

reciting their names
lusting after their deaths
almost hating them
for escaping

struck by lightning?
so many! so lucky!
electrocuted?
how sudden, how kind!
road accident?
how ordinary! I'll take it!

insides turned into soup
by fluoride ion?
a slow death, this,
always too late
when you know
you've been exposed

[it was too late
when I knew
I had exposed myself
to loss to come,
to this heavy grief,
when I first set eyes on you]

imagine being
envious of the dead
- damp corpses
rotting in cold graves -

but that was then

loss

tea mixed with regret
spent bullets in the dust
knives sliding across the tongue
blood on metal

the scent of you
in the mornings
after you've spent yourself
on someone else

nothingness
an emptiness too vast to fill
except with every last drop
of your blood

screaming with no sound
a steady drowning
slowly and then all at once
catching fire

the cold ashes
of everyone I've ever loved
perfume sprayed
on the inside of my wrist

a dead body floating on water
buffeted by waves
forever rising
to look at me

warmth

sometimes I order
a fat mug of steaming coffee
just to hold something warm

then I picture your heart
pulsating in my palms
hot blood spilling into cold air

the fire it kindles
keeps me warm for days
let the coffee go cold

ceasefire

when men leave

women try to heal each other
but wars are never far away

at midnight the tree 
outside my window
comes alive with fireflies

and then the bats
eat them 

plaster saint

you would recoil in horror
at the mere thought 
of crushing a cockroach
you would not even 
kill an ant, no

then you
stabbed me repeatedly
until I had to hold my insides in
with my hands and fight
for air

my body remembers 
being your punching bag
your mattress
your safe space
your well

the place from which 
you would fill yourself -
and pour it all out 
on someone else.

whore

whenever someone sets out to break me,
their intentions so transparent,
I look to you

an army of beggars, amateurs,
tongues tripping
on stock phrases

"you’re so beautiful";
"I want you now";
"I love you"

it takes a halfwit to fall for it,
this parade of hands reaching out
to take, take, take!

hungry mouths spilling out
so much flattery, it stinks in the streets
saccharine sweet

then, unfailingly, the parade of accusations
weak men forever shouting
'WHORE'

they think I care,
they think they burn me,
I, who have felt nothing after you

rebirth

reel it all back in,
those feelings you poured into us
these past months

fill yourself up again
with your illusions, leave me empty
of your word vomit

did you think I would beg?
did you think I would weep?
did you think I would even blink?

you do me
a disservice
with these imaginings

I have been buried too many times
to be eviscerated
by one more ending

I will resurrect myself just fine

Losing Lasantha

your loss tastes like

newspapers

soaked in blood for breakfast

newsprint gathering dust in darkness

printing presses silenced by State machinery

windshield glass mixed with sand
spent bullets trampled into the dirt

(the bullets didn't break your body or brain:
to eliminate you they had
cattle-prods)

deafness to a decade’s screaming

a strangling of leads
leading nowhere

ink rendered invisible

your silenced laughter

spilling into the earth

forebodings of what would follow

with Kilinochchi withdrawal

Elephant Pass abandonment

the weight of all those doctors

bearing down on you

to bring you back

the names of those

who wanted you dead

still laughing

printing in reverse

unchewed pens

tears.

(8 January 2019 marks 10 years since Lasantha was assassinated.)

futile

don't mind me
I'm just waiting
for the world 
to stop breaking
all the women 
it births