Githara Gunawardena
HOmesickness
Sunday mornings don’t feel right here
And kitchens aren’t for cooking in.
We bleach and whiten ours
In case people come to call.
Ammi carves two syllables clean off her name,
And we must hide our feet forever now;
The cracking heel’s crusts like rivers,
The anklet’s song,
The calves.
My skin pales in the tramlight.
I play tic-tac-toe on my thigh,
Scraping Xs that frosten into my skin,
My pinky nail gathering the ashes
Of what is left of me.
On Bridging a Distance
Something so sterile about all this green:
Newlands, stifled by moss and vapour
Cold clouds roping the mountain necks.
You say you can’t wait to sit here with me.
Now, your knees and mine
A cordillera of bone,
We watch the slow fog settle
Snugly into valleys, far away
Like how we sometimes part
In sleep
Until your cold Achilles tendon
Finds itself in the crook of my toes,
Beneath the covers,
Microcosmic.
Even here
I’ll keep you warm.
Githara Gunawardena is a third-year undergrad student of English literature at Victoria University in Wellington. She has lived in New Zealand since moving from Colombo, Sri Lanka four years ago.