The Water Cycle

Para Vadhahong

 

there are streets and they are underwater
                                    there are elephants and they are underwater

there are buddhas and they are underwater

                     and so are the fruits we have carefully placed at their altars

the gold flakes left by the thumbs of worshippers
                                                                       now chipped off into water particles

                               every 7-eleven on our block is underwater

the chedis of ayutthaya are toppling underwater

                                                        my cousins’ bicycle links are unchaining underwater

                           alligators open their jaws as they wash away

and i have no crumbs to toss them                               the tide outweighs the mass of me

           the river where we lit and set free our krathongs

                                                                rises above the heads that once bowed down to it

                       the ghosts are still so hungry underwater

though i try to drown my scream underwater                it resurfaces

                               my street snakes up                     my spine         despite the years

                       so let it be known that there was once                         a house

               a pond                  a field                       a table                  a window

a language                                                                                                a song

          i have loved you full of oxygen

                                                                        i can love you without it
 

Para Vadhahong is a Thai US writer and zinester whose words are published in fifth wheel press, DVAN, Sine Theta, Honey Literary, and others. They are the winner of Salt Hill Journal‘s Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize (2022) and Palette Poetry‘s Sappho Prize (2023). They are the Editor-in-Chief of On Prayer, a community anthology published by The Seventh Wave. You can read their work at paravadhahong.weebly.com.

 

© Variant Literature Inc 2023