En Route

Like you, I was raised in the 
institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart.
Cameron Awkward-Rich, “Meditations in an Emergency” 

En Route 
In memory of those on the Calicut plane crash in Kerala, India on Aug, 7, 2020

Before flooded runway tripped plane into a valley curved to catch & hatch its metal body into half, opening it to the sky’s fury, one of the children must have dozed off to Inside Out, cheeks tear-stained since departure gate, where drops hit linoleum trying to still grow roots, sobbing I want to stay here. I want to stay home. Parents, in exhaustion, might have snapped We are going home! in a hurry to pack up remittances of abandoned apartments into suitcases–now fallen & mud-covered, enveloped by plastic that passengers watched machines spin around like cotton candy dreams their tongues couldn’t even taste, & now, needed to wrap their last cracking hopes together. Son thought of mother, gasping in overflowing crisis ward, & wondered how to pay bills with free PPE. Old uncle sighed out his half-a-century soldering metal city before holding airplane-mode mobile to his heart, lock screen of granddaughter he will finally meet. Tired Amma held her baby–born in a metal city that did not want them–close to her milk-stained churidar chest, humming We will be home soon–soon was a defeated papa’s last words to children eager to find their Ammuma’s house on the ground, window blinds up to Calicut's soft night lights glowing below, for temporary holiday, innocence of home faltering as they realize this was permanent desertion of where they came from–that which kept telling them all to go back to where they came from & washed their hands off to ensure safety from liability after pushing them one by one into a plane through a pandemic, writing this death sentence they won’t have to read because bad timing, because the plane landed, almost–almost, the split second, opens to a child, standing between broken halves, rain soaking his mother’s now-red shawl, witnessing the world’s metal promises betray them. 



Illustration by Simone Hadebe