BRAIDS by Krisha Wignarajah

CONTENTS

It is raining...

Braids

Birds have wings...

Flies buzz...

It is evening...

Grade Two

I go home...

Wellawatta Outdoor Bazaar

Curfew

Amappa's Eyes

Islands

I reached out...

Evening Walk

Awakening shadow...

The Flight

A Robin's Bath

The Heron and the Swan

War on a Mango

Tea with Dadda

Granite Stone

Sigh with the wind...

Today, I have gone back...

About the Poet

Acknowledgements

Chapbook Home

Friday Circle Home

Braids

by Krisha Wignarajah

Islands

Sent away from home,
a piece of land
floats upon the soft, pliant
ocean waves.

Alone
this land
impels its roots to find
an anchor.
Eeling down
snaking around silver fish
to grate against coral,
bleeding,
finding only
sifting silt.

And so the land keeps swaying
upon the ocean wave,
its people's customs, now native
change, swelter — never form.
The salt air sickly sweetened with
pungent fumes of unknown fruit.
Spices multiply and seep into
food and stories.

What are they?
Who keep drifting
over ocean, feeling
the water's movement
but not of land's?