We are running out of supplies of everything that made the country run:
Gas, petrol, diesel, kerosene.
And hope, that we can emerge from this.
Like a stockbroker in a time of economic volatility, watching the value of investments soar and crash,
I lose heart when the power gets cut
It’s 3 hours a day now - 1 hour and 40
minutes in the middle of the day and 1 hour and 20 at dusk.
These are scheduled powercuts, with times and area categories all tabulated,
but the sinking feeling still comes, when the fans stop and the lights blink out.
On an island in an island, up in the mountains far away from the protests and the slogans on the mud flats,
I am growing kale in verandah pots.
I know the evening power cut only lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes.
In that time, I could go through all the motions of a yoga class;
or do a Californian meditation.
I could make myself a food drink with hot water from a vacuum flask.
The country once proud and graceful, is faltering, teetering and flailing. Like a
drunk and disorderly genteel female being escorted out of global society
in full, glaring, public view
With a designated driver on each side,
To prop her up.
All the slogans have been disconnected from the core values that should fuel a
glorious social uprising.
Revolution without resolution, results.
The heart is an engine, a clenched fist,
But it’s splintering and splaying.
It takes courage to mark the days on the calendar, to celebrate the everyday joys, while the great lights we have lived by one by one go out.
Things are so bad that our individual heartbreaks are not reported in the daily news.
We hoard them, like the opposite of treasure.
Like paper currency in a wheelbarrow, suddenly valueless
Bio
Devika Brendon is a teacher, editor, reviewer and writer of English Literature. Her poetry, short stories, and reviews have been widely published in Australia, India and Africa, and her academic articles in Europe and the U.S.A. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sunday Island, Roar, Groundviews and LMD. She is a columnist at Ceylon Today.
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