I’d rather be a glimpse than a girl. Good. I’ll rest here for now.

There was a time, Abu says, before your great-grandmother, when water was blue because it was a bruise, when it could feel our hands like the skin of a fruit.

“The ecology and economy of the region is under threat. This Transpacific Literary Project folio, Monsoon Notebook is for these essential, vanishing, and unruly waters.”

The sun sieves through the canopy— / rivers are relenting. My soul seats itself // for the first time. Where it is quiet, it becomes cold. / There is nothing I must do but die— // what joy to let go of all things—what ease to give up.

‘I roam. Sometimes in solitude; sometimes in a crowd. But unlike a dog, I do not die a little each day, subdued to the loyalty of my master. I die all at once if it must be.’

An excerpt from Chang-rae Lee’s On Such A Full Sea

The rivers / and trenches glossed with light / know we are so relentless as to plan / for catastrophe