Two Micros

by Swetha Amit

Roots

It was three in the morning. She tossed and turned before discovering she could not go back to sleep. She crept to the kitchen and switched on the light, took out the pressure cooker, and then boiled some rice and lentils. She chopped garlic, ginger, and green chilies and sauteed them in ghee with cumin seed, watching them turn golden brown. She transferred them into the vessel of boiled lentils and added chili powder, hot spices, and salt. She put the flame on low—just as her mother had always advised. She watched them merge into a thick, aromatic blend, stirring until no mixing was required, and switched off the flame. Then, she mixed the rice and lentils on a steel plate and began to eat with her hand. She savored the rich taste of this simple recipe passed down through generations. Whenever she suffered a case of insomnia, this alchemy of rice and lentils soothed her nerves; she wasn’t sure why. Probably because it reminded her of her roots on foreign soil. She fondly recollected those meals with her family back in India: a home which was now reduced to rubble, and a family whose traces were now ashes merged with the soil beneath the earth.

Shell House Bubble

In our ideal world, we live in a shell house. The surrounding waves are mellow and placid, like a blue carpet. They seldom swell and provide a firm ground for our private retreat. There aren’t any storms here. No tsunamis. No forest fires. No earthquakes. We don’t lose sleep over the possibility of being evacuated because of forty-foot king waves. Everything is resplendent. Not a day passes when dark clouds hover upon us like a sheet of gloom. My husband and I eat live oysters out of glass bowls. We chat for long hours and snuggle together on our couches, watching the humpback whales do their thing. We feed the manta rays or watch the jellyfish bob on the surface. We row to the wharf market in the evenings to grab a drink. Watch the sky turn orange as the sun dips behind the purples and pinks of fanning clouds. Later, we admire the shooting stars darting across the indigo night sky.

No catastrophe here to wreck our wharf.  

Sometimes, within the pearly white of our walls, we just sit or cook grilled fish. Paint pictures of underwater life. There is no one to question why we don’t birth children. We joke about that phase when we constantly chased deadlines and caught flights. The endless meetings and sporadic texts. The distancing and hollowing of our voices. That swirl of life when the tendrils of our union had become shaky.

A layer of strong bubble protects us. Even with the occasional swell, we won’t crumble. We will no longer see the salty mass of waves trespassing its boundaries. No sleep will be lost over avalanches rolling down mountains. No weeping over innocent victims at the mercy of fatal bullets. Instead, we just drift in the warmth of our embrace and float along the turquoise-blue froth. Swim to the reef, pull lobsters from beneath the rocks, and play with their antenna. At the same time, we will switch off from the signals of our human antennae. The ones that would disrupt our harmony and prove hazardous to our shell house bubble.

BIO: Swetha is an Indian author based in California and a MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco. She has published works across genres in 60-plus journals, including Atticus Review Toasted Cheese. (https://swethaamit.com). She has received three Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations.