Cast Off Poem by Deva De Silva

My mother didn't eat the mango
That grew in my father’s garden
Yet, she peels it for me
Skinning it with a steel peeler
Red peels float around me
Swimming with me
Swirling in the water
Pulling at my skin
Grazing my hair
Threatening to carry my body with it
I cup my hands
Making a ball of wrinkly flesh
To save them
To save us
To save myself
They smirk and disappear
My mother doesn't see
She offers me a slice of the mango
The bigger slice
Sweet juices sweating on its skin
Why doesn’t she taste it?
I seize its citrus smell in my nostrils
Stinging its way in
Never wanting to let go
I forget to savour the sweetness

I am struggling to mime a cork
To stay afloat
Been in the water for too long
Balancing myself on a slimy rock
I curl my toes around a slimy water crest
It clutches at me to steady itself
Vanishing in a flash
I’m hurled head down drowning
Who abandoned me in anguish?
Not my mother
She still hovers around me

I long to fly
I am on a wooden swing
World blurred around me
Trees fly and the birds lie in the mud
Ropes threaten to tie knots around my ankles
I hear the clink of steel loops
They mean to imprison me
I scream in silence
A hidious sound escapes within me
'No! not my ankles! '
I shout out, hoping to be heard
I don’t want to swing anymore
I want to be back on earth again
Skipping along on a gravel road

My father is resting
In his mahogany armchair
With its broken footrest
His gleaming eyes turned sad
A sticky black cigar
Dangling from the corner of his mouth
Chewing on it and twitching his eyebrows at me
Stench of tobacco spew in the air
Where is my mother?
Why can’t I write English letters properly?
They slant to the left
With awkward gaps in between
I cannot do anything right
My letters, words, and even my thoughts disown me