I could forget all this

forget the flight

headlong through Galle Road

clutching an instant’s spark of hope,

refusing to abandon this wretched

vulnerable life

even though the very earth shuddered

– and so too, my heart –

forget the sight

of a thigh-bone protruding

from an upturned, burnt-out car

a single eye fixed in its staring

somewhere between earth and sky

empty of its eye

a socket, caked in blood

on Dickman’s Road, six men dead

heads split open

black hair turned red

a fragment of a sari

that escaped burning

bereft of its partner

a lone left hand

the wristwatch wrenched off

a Sinhala woman, pregnant,

bearing, unbearably,

a cradle from a burning house

I could forget all this

forget it all, forget everything.

But you, my girl,

snatched up and flung away

one late afternoon

as you waited in secret

while the handful of rice

– found after so many days –

cooked in its pot,

your children hidden beneath the tea bushes

low-lying clouds shielding them above –

how shall I forget the broken shards

and the scattered rice

lying parched upon the earth?