In the Sunlight, We Burned

POETRY

Tiffany Aurelia

Late November 1980: a series of anti-Chinese racial riots occurred throughout cities in Central Java.

November and a girl tongues out a verse from her grandmother’s tattered church book.

Kneads the hymns between her fingers, each verse soft and motherless like a wound.

Tuhan, they witnessed another execution last morning.

Two palms pressed on both eyes but no veil can veil the cries. It stings the city with a heaviness that soaks their fists raw, leaves them to dredge torn uniforms out of every corner of sky.

Rocks hurled. Torn flags. City screaming out, out, out.

The boy taking shelter in the bakery, closes his eyes as a bottle of thrown Arak cracks open its shell.

I want to see the ocean in heaven, he thinks, as the flame buries his skin in wavelets of mandarin.

The house, still warm with stripped belongings. Everywhere, children learning the meaning of their skin.

Jeering mobs. Wildfires unearthed in the war years.

Fruit store kneeling into the asphalt — its owner’s legs peeking out and soaking in an estuary of jambu pulp.

Cheeks pressed against the attic like hands in prayer but later, someone traces the outline of a face in the ash.

City shattering: a song exhaled for the last time.

Tuhan, the man is on fire, flames cleaving the air into lunar-red shards. Limbs lifted to the ancestors because no one wants to die alone.

His screams forever calloused in all the living eyes. After. Unpronounceable.

translations — Bahasa Indonesia

Tuhan — translates to ‘God’ jambu — a tropical fruit commonly found in Java (also known as ‘Wax Apple’)

Arak — an Indonesian alcohol made of fermented coconut sap. This line references the mass molotov cocktails thrown during the riots.