Di Jayawickrema

the moon is far away yet it sways the tides

Never look at the black sun, my grandmother tells my mother. My mother is a child, 

my grandmother is still alive. Newspapers warn there is no safe way to view a solar eclipse. 

We have no special glasses in Sri Lanka yet. But people must see what they can see. 

Some smear soot across their spectacles. Some hold hand-mirrors high. My mother peers 

into a basin of water. She tells this story every year I visit, as if for the first time. 

In the ripples, the sun looked like the moon, she says. Her voice drifts.

It will be many years before the water touches me.  

Solastalgia

Montauk is a place where nothing goes wrong. We come here every summer. Always 

yellow sand, green water, stretching sky. But this year, we trip over trash as we walk the strand, drinking wine out of plastic bottles. 

Those rocks…my friend’s voice trembles as she eyes the distant line of rocks we always aim for. You’re drunk, I say. No, she laughs. It’s just...I want those rocks to be here forever. 

I can’t think what to say. 

There is a word for this, but we don’t know it yet.

to my community

When people tell me to open the door, I like to lock it shut. My therapist says, my teachers say, the dandelions say, the black-tipped reef shark says, “that’s the little girl in you afraid to be loved and left.” Well, I’m not listening to a shark. I don’t trust anything with teeth. Even less, blowsy yellow weeds with no defenses at all. I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to show up. I’m learning to trust the little girl with her mouth set, arms crossed flat across her chest. Together, we’ve smiled into the wind as if our contempt alone could turn back the storm without ever parting our lips. When I say I belong to nobody that includes all of you. How can you trust in any “us” too much? We all hate borders and love boundaries. I know you see the contradiction.