Three Micros
by Sumitra Singam
The River Has It’s Own Weather
In my dream we walk by a river, and it is swollen and turgid and I keep well away, but you are on the shore, and in the laws of the dream, we are very far apart yet you hear me when I whisper come away now, and you ignore me as if I haven’t spoken and continue getting your plimsolls wet, shoes you have never worn in real life, white canvas and fitted and low enough to reveal a delicate arch in your midfoot with a vermiform vein sinuous with river water. The river has its own weather and there are islands of thunderclouds and oases of humidity, and you ignore the weather of the river and get wet and cold, and in the laws of the dream you are close to death yet warm and pink and laughing. I feel a slow creeping dread like rising floodwater that will crest at any minute and engulf me. And I want to keep walking, it is the only way, but you squat on the pebbly bank of the river, large enough to be an ocean here, waves frothing at your feet encased in their plimsolls, completely dry by the laws of this dream. You squat and relieve yourself, and you say nothing, you do not remark on it, and I say, it is all water anyway, and you are now on the water, hovering above it I mean, and the second I realise that is not possible, you and I are both in the water, deep deep deep in a trench at the edge of a sea cliff that spools inky and black into the forever and you dip in and out of it not holding on to anything at all and I dive after you but you are safe and I am lost and swirling and frightened, and you are on a hammock, in a whale, on your death bed, and you say it is all just time. It is okay, I love you, you can let go.
The Person I Would Usually Talk to About Things Like the Fact That You’re Dying Is You
So we talk of birds instead. The long-eared owl is your favourite, and to cope, I consider getting a tattoo of one – you know, after. I have a heightened sense for the sky – a flit of green, a territorial squawk. You ask if I heard the butcher bird. My heart is a hummingbird.
You plan a living wake; give me a swooping, forked-tailed song to sing - an evening call to roost.
I imagine your hands as talons, your scapulae winging out. That all you will leave is a stir of wind. I scatter crumbs. Hope the birds will come.
Five Days After You Died I Cried My Heart Out
It fell out of my left eye. I guess that makes sense. The side – because of where my heart is, but also because it was your left breast that killed you. I felt a strange globus sensation. Like I’d swallowed a fish bone, but not as sharp. It kept travelling up my pharynx until my heart fell out of my eye. It was a lighter colour than I thought it would be. Almost pink. And firm, like it had experience in lifting and holding heavy things. For a while, I looked at my heart while my body went still and pale and lost all capacity to beat. It was only time, but without a rhythm to mark it. In the end, I just swallowed my heart and it swam back to its place in my chest. It beats, but the way a heart that has seen the world and never will again does.
BIO: Sumitra Singam is a Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces, both beautiful and traumatic to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for Best Microfictions 2024. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com