Vandana Khanna

B T

Blackwater Fever

They didn't find it in me until months later —
just like Vallejo who died on a rainy
day far from the heat rising over a garden
in silvers and reds — far away from the din
of buses, tobacco vendors, cows that overran
the streets with their holiness. Laid on the surface
of the Ganges, the thin shells reflected light, clamored
against the current. Far from the Atlantic, farther still
from the Potomac. Same color of night, dull dawn.
The fever should have churned my blood into tight