[Summer two-thousand and ten.]
The sunlight clings to my shirt as I stand outside with a book whose pages are as thin as tissue. My mum waters her curry leaf tree, and the branches extend over the fence, entangling with the neighbour’s bottlebrush. Hand in hand.
“Am I saying this right?”
Inside the book sits a word traced repeatedly. I know its shape, its soft vowels and the voice
of each consonant. I know that it is not exactly a word except a name and the name is mine
yet adorned in characters I cannot distinguish from the rest.
Recently my mind has been a series of questions.
“And this?”
How do you say, මෙය and then සඳ? How do you say යන්න and then ඉන්න?
How then, do මගේ give this හැඟීම a name? And this feeling, how should you name this feeling?
Tell me what to do with this , with this ?
With my අත් that do not understand and my හිත that does not හෙල්ලෙන්න the right way?
What language should I sing with, and is it not my ancestors face I am wearing; how do I say ancestor?
“No, no. Just goodbye?”
And she says to me, it is too little to say just goodbye in Sinhala.
I must say, “go and then come back.”
