Ashes at Kande Beach, Malawi

Ashes at Kande Beach, Malawi

Everything is an elegy these days, all chipped rings, clipped wings. You are alive, so the pills work,

but there is something morbid in even the sunrise on the lake, the way its reds & pinks bleed

the night behind them, putting the stars to death & in their place a blank sky, a wordless

mourning. When three geckos pull their bellies across the wall of your cabin, you spin a prayer

for the mosquitoes, the prey with their giveaway scents & tender limbs. You wake to a hum, thinking,

oh shit! This must be the Great Hum, the churning of all the submersed parts & pistons that I am

commanding me to wake up & eat & listen to Phoebe Bridgers & love my neighbor as myself,

etcetera. That Will to Live they are always talking about. But no. The Hum simmers to a hum, & soon enough

it’s gone, & there you lie, still alive, still not dead, still as the lake at dawn. You crack the door.

Why not? You allow the dawn to slide in, feeding you a trick of the light, light being God’s first trick.

Let there be light, He said, & so we were blinded. Look. Look at the beach, the beach shrouded

in ash. It’s been blackened. It’s like the beach has smoked itself down to the roach & given birth

to a new & identical beach, a phoenix hatchling swaddled in soot. As soon as you picture wings,

a pair of them, the ash begins to shiver, & then you see it for real. Not God’s first trick

but his fifth. Let the seas & skies be filled with hungry mouths. Let the ash, bristling with shine,

be not ash at all but a million lakeflies, crash- landed, unhumming. Let the winged be betrayed by

the wind, marooned by the sand. Let the sand throw on its corpse coat, its most sickening ensemble,

& yes, let every embrace of sole & earth be an elegy. Why not? Let the birds get fat.

Let the pills get heavy. Let us not walk anywhere without treading on grief upon grief upon grief.

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