The woman who burned her salmon

The woman who burned her salmon
by Azly rahman

Descending from the clouds late one evening visiting souls
I chanced upon a woman too many but that one who burned her salmon got etched in my memory

She wanted the dame of the Atlantic sea to be one with Teriyaki
Grilled it on the stove fully dressed in ginger and wasabee
In her eyes I saw her spirit dancing frantically almost like a flamenco and salsa choreographed in hybridity and that her salmon was quiet and ready to face its karma for living a life of a piranha

From the clouds high above I was hanging upside down watching the woman sprinkling her Teriyaki

Like a high priest of a temple of Helena blessing the devotee with black wine

The salmon smiled awaiting paradise of the hereafter at every sprinkling of the holy source her soul feeling cleansed of the life she lived in the rivers of Sin City

She is now ready for her journey to mokhsha
I saw the woman’s eyes

Fifty not yet-still she may have been but a beauty of no comparison she seems, her hair like Yoko Ono’s flow gloriously all over her sanctuary, the kitchen of a paradise of any woman’s envy and she sang happily

Ahh … beautiful woman I could see her from my upside-down-ness
Where have you been all these years
As mysterious as the origin of the Teriyaki
As precise your tale as the perfectness of the wasabi
As calm in the face of death as the martyrdom of the salmon with a pink Atlantic body
And the kitchen and her became one

Immersed in the finiteness of the cybernetic technology in her hand and her salsa-flamenco hybridity in her mind, she danced and danced until she is the danced and the dance become her
Hours may have been for the joys of suffering of the salmon teriyaki that the woman was already in ecstasy that nothing else matters but the act of becoming of bodhishakti and to detach one with the salmon blessedly bathed in the holy teriyaki

Then suddenly
Suddenly
Actually more than just suddenly

The salmon was well cremated
As it was well-intended
Ashes it has almost become
At the fifth heaven it has arrived
En route to purgatory it has traversed
Singing hallelujah along the path to ultimate glory
Bathed in teriyaki it was

The whole kitchen was smoking like a concert hall playing beethoven’s fifth symphony
And still, the woman who burned her salmon
Did not even realize what a panditha to salmons she has become
As she continues to dance
Not even glancing out of the window
Where an upside-down being hangs wondering
How many fish get martyred the Japanese-way!