Kitchen Slug

I hold my breath as you gently pick the slug up on a piece of paper and place it outside. My hands are cupped to my mouth as you balance it holding the edge of the paper, the slug wobbly upon the rest of it. Behind your head, the halo of the years we have survived, a montage of the wars that left no witness. How does a mollusc without a shell endure the Earth? How does one reach the kitchen when even the windows are vowed tight-lipped into silence? One of us will unlock the door out of this house before, cracking the other’s heart. There is no other epilogue to love. Sometimes I prepare for that bloodshed, cushioning my tender tissues against a shell of law and logic. Once, after an ugly fight I had lit up a corner of the kitchen napkin to see how fast fire spreads. How quickly a flicker smells like a barn burning— blaze licking the air in small swirls, birds spat out of its mouth like false threats. I learnt how quickly the slug contracts itself into an impenetrable, slimy mass. Later that night when we had unfurled ourselves to each other, I wanted to tell you how sharing a little life is like walking a long sentence, gasping at the gaps and tripping over punctuation, refusing to believe in the period that hides in the distance. This is how I trudged through rot and earth, muddied in love. How I ploughed across your grey and gravel, brimming black with empathy. This is why perhaps I will unbolt the door, leave that crack in you, a hole only big enough for another kitchen slug to enter. I will stand at a distance holding my breath, watching you bend and choose kindness, over and over again.

Debmalya (he/him) is a writer and mathematician based in Birmingham, UK. His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bangalore Review, Propel, Anthropocene Poetry, The Hooghly Review, CounterClock, and Spacebar, among other literary journals. He has lived by the rivers Ganga, Kaveri, Teesta, Rhea and Thames.