Piercing Indentations

Choyang Ponsar

The bitter aroma of burning flesh gasps along the cut of her tuned shoulders till an exhalation fails to announce itself once more, as enveloping captors never—

It never does in hill stations, she supposes absently. The needled windowsill cups her knees as she slings a clattering of chhurpi-cloth wrapped butter lamps over the way. Rationalized for lacerating use; for dictations; dictations; tations; tions, sions; incisions through the stinging fog, a cleaved consideration upon the freshly silted remnants drifting from the crematory down the road. She had flattened the bone of her cheek on her shrine room floor the night before and murmured to the ani/la below about if she could witness them sighing on the other side of the gate too. The recently bardo’d. 

—You’ll find your answer echoed tomorrow in the gompa hallway. Amongst only the women of course; the men? Well never mind their (de)faults,

Just how many moons has it been since preparations for Saka Dawa began? Foam fills her head at the thought as a numbed hand travels down/down/down till a half empty silver lighter renders in her dewed palm, the tarnished imprint it lodged against her hip finally unlocked for the first time since she awoke hours prior and glitched together her school uniform. The sound of her parents fasting beyond her left shoulder is marked periodically by slices of spirits wisping around her. Uneasy caresses and jilts at the fold of her pupil left her nervously immobile but it wasn’t anything new—why did this morning mirage frighten her so?

A boy she had downloaded letters from out of boredom in a previous version of life once bragged of the frequented colony of his making as future nationhood, but she was much more content by her periphery wanderings in the clouded terminal she has embedded herself within. 

A realm of imprecision blinded by curtains of mist day in, day out, day in, day out—kilometers above his home. A realm where it was a waste to heed the warnings of monsoon either way for it lost all spectacle before exile even began. A realm saturated by hauntings that infuriatingly tangle in her choppy hair, tugging her frame this way and that.

Tinny shrieks from the ether abruptly douse her body and the spirits release their grip as if to scoff /took you long enough/. Reluctantly she shifts off the ledge, shrugs the strap of her bag on, and reaches for a stray butter lamp that had escaped her satchel. When aglow its flame merely dissolves into the scenery, more of a hazy comfort than anything useful. She inhales its fumes nonetheless and dashes downstage, stage right, anywhere the darts of the deceased flicker and soar. Again, the cries commence, shattering serenity. 

The sonic dissonance between the subject of her curiosity and the familiar clamoring of school bells in the distance warps together. Each collection of trees is a copy and paste from the last collection of trees and the only thing that seems to soften her truancy is the cushions of waterlogged moss beneath her that exhale with each step she takes, masking her panic. Pathways of light funnel into a singular beam that beckons her to follow deeper into the network, fluttering in uneven circles till she’s left seeing stars. The edge of the platform she finds herself on gives way with a start at her presence and down/down/down the slope side she tumbles, butter lamp still in hand.

Dirt cascades onto her bitten tongue as she crumples in a heap at the bottom of the bank, bloodied shins shrieking at her impulse to drift off. But painfully marionetting her face sideways reveals the frame of a girl her age mirroring her position. Mirroring her position in the center of the stream she has stumbled upon. 

Before she can lose her nerve, she pulls herself up and staggers into the shallow water, carving a route towards the girl encased in whirlpools. 

—Acha, she chokes out, acha/la? 

The stranger’s frailty compounds when the mere pangden tied around her thin figure paired with a spare khata scarf woven thru her hair registers. The threadbare fragment of karpo unknots and she frantically grasps at it through the ripples, spraying a shower of droplets onto the still body—activating it at last. 

The girl sharply uncricks her neck and lazily unfolds herself limb by limb. Like a lotus in bloom. Perhaps a metok. And it isn’t until Metok pauses to mask a yawn that she uninterestingly notes the disheveled state of her heckler. Metok slowly reaches out towards her and presses the back of her hand against her onlooker’s face. Coils of steam erupt out of their momentary touch and Metok shrinks back unimpressed. 

—I suppose you don’t happen to know what day it is.

—Looking in your eyes, could it be anything but migmar? 

—Metok hums; migmar you say? 

—Yes, Tuesday in every sense of the word. 

Choyang Ponsar (ཆོས་གཡང་དཔོན་གསར་) is a new media artist/researcher and graduate of the University of California, Berkeley who also produces work under the name tsuwoe (འཚུབ་པོ་ / stylized in lowercase). Her critical practice largely revolves around mutating perceptions of body modification within the Tibetan consciousness.