If I were to meet the ghost
of my childhood running
with slipping shoulder-straps
and half-plaited hair
beside a brown expanse
of memorising water
and the mellow faces of wooden houses
half-hidden by a weave
of coconut, mango, guenip trees

I would say this was her childscape
this was where she was shaped
like first words formed on slate –

A raw and lyrical landscape
that witnessed her carelessness
of death, her fall from tree,
her near muddy-pool drowning
and how nothing seemed
to separate her from anything –
Not from the equatorial sun or sailing moon
or shooting stars of black tadpoles –

If I were to meet the ghost
of my childhood –
I would kneel beside her for a while –
this slip of a brown girl gazing at fish shapes
under brown sunlit water –
patwa, sunfish, butterfish –
mesmerised by their movement
and the silent scales of their music.

Then I’d straighten up
leaving her in her elementary world,
her bright aloneness. Oblivious of me.