Afterwards, Jiah Khan slung her red silk dupatta
from a ceiling joist in her Juhu beach apartment,
my viral-stricken buck rattled to sleep curled by
my bed, and I woke to the cold body of silence –
to rumouring eucalypts while outside field mice
scampered, their brood coffled by a tomcat’s spur.
Wine in the bay, the casual emptiness of dusk
spilled like words flooding my dry, jittery veins.
I lay restless: half-alive, a tinder to your hexing
syntax, indefensible, a trauma of prayerful hands.
Morning’s atonement was a church in Assagao,
radio salsa, a driver who pitied my émigré faith.
Every step was littered. There was a flower cart
left, a crucifix half-buried in the scarified earth.
I peeled in that oasis of clean light, Manueline
arches encircled the red patchwork of reliquaries.
Conceiving rosary beads I read tablets of duplicate
José de Souzas and Catharine Théresas of Lisboa,
and in folly traced a snake to the locked presbytery,
its archives stained with sweaty imprints, vinho
– later, ConceiÇão de Jacinto, head of forgeries
avowed a nine per cent rise in adulterated passports.    
Now darkness is awash, I burn sandalwood without a
care for genealogy scams, the predictable everlasting.
Shredding basil, I stir. I drink wine alone, tallying
the fixed unanswerable syllables, this arid cursive,
sure oblivion, a dying of desire; of fading, not dying …