Part 14

Born in one town and raised in four others
before I was ten, I feel like the earth, unable
to say where I started. Was it night first, at

the beginning of the first rotation? The only
certainties are the ceaseless movement and
gravity. The inability to fly. Standing on the

beach in Chennai, I wondered if this was still
the womb, readying for the real birthing.
If my own vastness, bigger than that sea, was

still forming. One rain, one deluge, was not
enough. This ocean knows everything, her
sand is coarse inside my mouth when I talk,

inside my thoughts as they spawn. All I know,
I learnt from her brown-blueness, lapping
around my ankles like a warning. How to

talk without speaking, how to listen while
still retreating, how to let go even when the
full moon is drowning in your belly. I asked

her about flight, she rises to the sky and falls
in endless cycles. Is leaving home the same as
dying? Is she born over and over again? How

will I know if what I am now is sea or cloud
or rain? She whispered warmly to my skin for
a moment. How to be alive without being.