'Windows' by Ellie Walsh
Mother points to my belly – convex
like a waning moon – reminds me to cover the windows
for the eclipse. Also, not to cook with cardamom,
not to keep jackfruit or garlic inside.
The last two were born the size of lychees, still in their sacks.
When my belly is at full moon, aunties come around.
I ask them about spice. No chilli powder
or mangosteen either, they say,
and remember to cover the windows.
I wake hourly, check the windows,
rip the bedsheets off the mattress to hang
over the shutters to block the straws of light
that needle through. Hammer nails into the window frames.
I throw the cardamom, then the other spices out of the window,
but when the women talk I smell garlic
in their throats, saffron on their hands.
I lock them outside, sit alone in the darkness.
When the contractions start, I scream.
The women scream back from outside, begging to be let in.
She’s born alive on a bed with no sheets.
No scent of cooking, no warm female chatter.
No faltering, emergent moon,
no gifts of jackfruit the size of her newborn body.
I run a finger over a window frame, splintered
by the nails, imagining the gutters turned red from paprika.
Her squalling body heavy in the new moon darkness.
When is it safe to uncover the windows?
To open them? To return this space to home,
allow in the saffron-choked air,
the pernicious, changing light?
like a waning moon – reminds me to cover the windows
for the eclipse. Also, not to cook with cardamom,
not to keep jackfruit or garlic inside.
The last two were born the size of lychees, still in their sacks.
When my belly is at full moon, aunties come around.
I ask them about spice. No chilli powder
or mangosteen either, they say,
and remember to cover the windows.
I wake hourly, check the windows,
rip the bedsheets off the mattress to hang
over the shutters to block the straws of light
that needle through. Hammer nails into the window frames.
I throw the cardamom, then the other spices out of the window,
but when the women talk I smell garlic
in their throats, saffron on their hands.
I lock them outside, sit alone in the darkness.
When the contractions start, I scream.
The women scream back from outside, begging to be let in.
She’s born alive on a bed with no sheets.
No scent of cooking, no warm female chatter.
No faltering, emergent moon,
no gifts of jackfruit the size of her newborn body.
I run a finger over a window frame, splintered
by the nails, imagining the gutters turned red from paprika.
Her squalling body heavy in the new moon darkness.
When is it safe to uncover the windows?
To open them? To return this space to home,
allow in the saffron-choked air,
the pernicious, changing light?
Ellie Walsh has a BA from the University of Chichester / Thompson Rivers University (CA), an MA from Bath Spa University and a PhD from University of Plymouth. She has had short fiction and poetry published with journals in Canada, India, Nepal and the UK. Ellie wrote a play called 'A Patient Drug' which was produced and performed in Cornwall and at Royal Holloway University, and she was an Associate Editor for the travel writing journal Coldnoon Travel Poetics, where she wrote a column on South Asian literature. Her debut novella-in-flash won the Bath Flash Fiction Award in 2019, and was shortlisted for a Saboteur Award, and her second novella, 'Stormbred', is forthcoming this year, published by Ad Hoc Fiction.