Girl Cousins, Pixelated
by RANUDI GUNAWARDENA
On days when my mother craved
ambarella for her bump, she drove
us to our cousins’ place in Ganemulla
where the ambarella tree was always
waiting, and under it, you. The fruit
hung bending the branches, like a hundred
small stomachs, bird-eaten and naked
where the beaks had pierced. In the sun
sieved through the leaves, your hair
gleaming, a crow’s wing mid-flight
and I, running into your small arms.
Evenings, after we tired of throwing
stones at high fruit, frightening squirrels
into temporary hiding, you taught me
how to kiss you like a boy from a new
Hollywood film. To run to you, waiting
at the foot of the ambarella tree, from the far
end of the garden, where in an artificial
pond, the saree guppy died every fortnight,
forgotten. I spun you, your dress filling
with wind like guppy fins trailing
in water, your bare feet floating barely
above ground. And when we kissed,
your lips tasted only of skin, smelled only
of ambarella—our teeth sinking in
through unwashed fruit skin to find
unexpectedly, like a buried tongue,
the insides. You cried Cut—cut, cut,
cut—so the retake was necessary;
my running, your spinning, our kiss always
not quite satisfactory, pixelated possibility
until you stopped me in the tree shade
and said, Enough, now I will be
the boy. Later, when we tired of this
too, we sat beneath the ambarella tree,
sharing a fruit crushed under your foot,
sucking in turns its vague tartness
until we were called home.
AUDIO
Listen to Ranudi Gunawardena read “Girl Cousins, Pixelated.”
This poem was chosen as the runner-up of the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 6.
Ranudi Gunawardena is a Sri Lankan poet whose work explores the wombscape, childhood in rural landscapes, and the uncanny in nature, among others. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Action, Spectacle; Equatorial; Kopi Collective; Magma; Samfiftyfour; and Wachana. She studies at Williams College.
See more poems from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25) by purchasing a copy.
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