The Burning Boat
Nikesh Murali
13 June 2009, 08:10The boat was a bonfire afloat on the ocean, sending up smoke signal dreams to the desert where they came from.
I thought of mum struggling to make tea in the twilight solitude of the bush.
When the burned man screamed as he was transferred to the stretcher, I thought I heard a prayer in there somewhere.
A prayer like the one mum says before the lights go out in the nearest property.
The ones that escaped the inferno in our rescue boats sat dazed, some wept and cursed in alien tongues.
I imagined mum, sitting on her bed in the warm glow of candlelight, staring into the cold night.
We all try to escape burning fates, I thought, and we are burned by its inevitability.
