Her sons and grandsons wash her naked frailty
in blessed water.
Hindu Priest breaks an egg.
Now they lay two shards of broken mirror
over her closed eyes, held well by high cheekbones,
she’s beautiful.
Drunk on incense smoke and choking on tears,
great grandchildren kneel to pray.
No golden Scepter, Orb or Crown Jewels…
Only flowers dropping from trees.
Wrapped in woven tikar mat,
brown and indigo batik,
her descendants pass under her tiny body raised up,
and she slips from our arms.
This way of goodbye, in the village… not televised,
a procession on foot,
her body carried to rest on bamboo poles,
not entombed in glory, but lowered into Earth Mother
by brown arms in the graveyard, she grew up playing in.
We repeat it for every Balinese human,
an Indonesian recipe for flying,
that perhaps the Queen could envy.
About the Creator
Robin Lim
My passion/motivation as a writer and midwife is cultural safety, respect, human rights in childbirth, & healthcare. You may see my work here: www.iburobin.com
First Starlight of Summer
Your whole being is constituted by yearning. You miss the stars but have never seen a fully-realized night sky sparkle to life before your eyes. You write things, funny but short but profound, emulating the archaic cosmos that turns by its own unknowable calculus emulating love in all its celestial glory turning in that same cryptic way, but fully know neither and hardly know both, and it feels disingenuous, so you write about writers. It feels vaguely masturbatory, but it’s funny but short but profound and it impresses the people around you enough, so you run with it forever until you can’t anymore.
By Steven Christopher McKnight4 days ago in Fiction
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