The Tired Tapioca

The tired tapioca

The tapioca keeps having
dreams about tornid summers,
lips parched from cracked grounds
The previous month’s moisture, escaping
Its clutches, travelling great distances
The tuber reminisces its tropical past
Dampened by the moist English skies
Unearthing the depths of the underworld
Torched by the intense heat of reality
Friends turn into foes, enemies into comrades

Lives sacrificed for faraway exports
The tapioca recalls being thrown
Into a sea-soaked crate
Bound for a life known to none
but the perpetrators of an even larger
crime…
Sold to nameless merchants
Whose trade is solely focused on
Relishing the fruits of
Faraway, unknown spoils
Brought to the homes of
Those to whom
Toils, unaccounted, form a way of life.

Poem and Drawing by S. Rasa Rasika