À l’heure du tout à l’image et du buzz sans suite, «l’express» souhaite faire découvrir la plume de poètes, de chanteurs, d’écrivains et de tous ceux qui jettent leur âme sur le papier, et qui mettent en mots des réflexions profondes.

My mother’s orange saree flows like lava in the streets.

I walk in her shadow, praying to remain unnoticed among devotees with needles as thick as willow sticks piercing their flesh.

Sharp iron rods impale devotees’ cheeks holding their faces like lamb on a skewer.

Four inch needles pierce someone’s earlobes while a honed bar penetrates an inch into the skin of another’s chest.

The clouded eyes of devotees manifest the edge of an abyss where those who stagger cling onto the mantras floating like embers around them.

The sandalwood incense bears a fragrance of vows and I look at my sister treading on coal, coming out as pure as a virgin.

My father claps and dances for her among the crowd.

Two boys dangle above the mass by two hooks stabbed into their flesh.

The flab on their lower back screams and stretches at every sway but the boys smile and move over the gathering like grotesque angels hanging with screws.

The men below the sweaty mortal angels twirl and embody the multiple saints whose names I can never remember.

In an instant, the flames hiss my name.

The burnt wood leaves a serenade calling me to scar my feet like wings of a bird flying too close to the sun.

Bio

A writer and PhD student at the University of Salford (UK), she is writing a nonfiction book on occult practices in Mauritius.