Blue Skies

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia
Photo Courtesy: George Steinmetz, National Geographic

Some days I wake up with a yearning at the pit of my stomach. It spreads to my chest and hands and legs, radiating to the tips of my fingers till I can't hold still anymore: I must see the sky. I want it to be blue, warm and kind. I want the clouds to be white; so white that I can't look at them but for a moment. I want the sky to overflow with its blue till it drips on my clothes; till I disappear in the transparency. I want the sky to be deep: so deep that I can peel it layer by layer and never quite finish. I want the sunlight to be bright and clear: not the yellow it is on most days or the grey it turns before a storm. I want the light to be airy and colourless. I want it to bend with the wind and I want to watch it slip from between my fingers. I want. 

The sea-shell house

On the shore by the sea was the sea-shell house.

Smooth and curved

Like a mollusc

It stood.

And if you looked closely you would see

That the big shell was made of small shells.

It glistened in the sun and shone in the rain

And one day I knocked on the door

To find an old lady inside 

The house, for it was a house after all.

The sea-shell house had no floor

So that the carpet was sand 

And it was softer and grainier on your feet

Than the carpets in palaces.

I sifted the sand with my toes

Till they looked sandy

(I've never said yellow for the colour of sand

Because it isn't yellow)

And told the old lady that

I liked her house.

She smiled at me and the wrinkly branches on her face

Grew leaves and flowers at the end.

It was spring

And I felt warmed enough to ask,

"How long have you been living here?"

She shook her head this way and that

And drew on the sand

Beneath her feet:

A clock with three hands

(Hours, minutes and seconds I revised

In case she asked me.

We were asked everyday in school)

And then she struck it off

With a deep gash right across the clock's face. 

When she looked up,

I thought I saw the leaves on the wrinkly branches quiver

But I answered myself anyway

"You don't have a clock."

She nodded her grey head

And took my hand to lead me 

To the table.

There were little shrimps laid out,

Crispy and golden,

Ready for the eating

And I felt my mouth sweat from the inside

Like it does when you look at something

You really want to eat

But I didn't show it

For fear that it was poisoned like Peter Pan's medicine was.

Hook had done it and Tinker Bell had almost died.

And I knew I didn't have a Tinker Bell with me.

"No, thank you. I must go now",

I said

With a little voice for the shrimps looked really hot

And I didn't care if they were poisoned.

She looked away and when she looked back at me

I could see

She had cried a little

Because the leaves were now wilting.

Once more she drew a picture on the sand

With her shaking fingers:

A girl with a smile and a plate on the table.

I stopped looking because I felt sad

And sorry for thinking that the shrimps would be poisoned.

I went to the table, pulled a chair

And bit into the first shrimp:

It was hot and golden and melting 

Like a summer day on the sea 

Exactly as I had thought it would taste.

Soon, I was on my fifth.

I looked back to thank the old lady

And to say sorry for the fuss I'd made before.

She was still drawing on the sand

But her fingers shook no more.

Eaten with curiousity,

I left the table to see what she had drawn:

The girl at the table was now inside a shell

The sea-shell house, I thought

Because every little furniture was drawn exactly 

In its right place.

The old lady was drawing furiously now.

The leaves were shaking in a storm.

She drew a face at the head of the house.

Like a snail coming out of its shell.

That's odd, I thought.

That isn't there.

She was drawing eyes on the snail's head.

And wrinkles like branches.

And leaves at their ends.

And the girl at the table slowly fused with its insides.

My fingers grew cold.

Outside, the sea was calling my name.

Waiting for an answer.