BY VARUN RAVINDRAN

Land’s End, San Francisco

The sea was lovely milk. The sea was smooth as a knell. The sea was a runnel,
a prayered tongue. The waves were lambs, and where they fell, the water
shone like eyes of needles. The sea beneath the bridge was a blue bed
of pollen, and the sea around the red bridge was a heatless flame, an idea
of flame. The sea rusted beneath the cliff, and marbled and fleeced and
breathed jasmine worlds unravelling in wind skittish as a compass needle.
The slaughtering sea drove the wind to my dash of a body. My eyes burned.
With the wind and my breath, my fingers buckled. Something strained my tongue
or my heart, something lifted my eyes or my heart and then was gone. Something
was no longer there. Something which had buckled was blown away, all the time
mouthing The sea is milk and knell and runnel. Something shattered my tongue
and then was not there where the sea was, where I was, where I was. Where I was
the waves fell like knock-kneed lambs.

Varun Ravindran was born in India and lives presently in Pittsburgh.