kamikaze

• “her father embarked at sunrise“
• ”a shaven head full of powerful incantations”
• ”enough fuel for a one-way journey into history”
• ”strung out like bunting on a green-blue translucent sea”
• “like a huge flag waved first one way

  then the other in a figure of eight,”
• ”the dark shoals of fishes flashing silver as their bellies swivelled towards the sun”
• ”remembered how he and his brothers waiting on the shore built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles”
• ”a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous”
• ”and though he came back my mother never spoke again in his presence“
• ”nor did she meet his eyes“
• ”and the neighbours too, they treated him as though he no longer existed”
• ”only we children still chattered and laughed”
• ”till gradually we too learned to be silent”
• “to live as though he had never returned, that this was no longer the father we loved”
• ”and sometimes, she said, he must have wondered

  which had been the better way to die”