Our ship was the rental apartment you never fully settle
into, learning to move in the dark around
its flaws: the low bruising
ceilings, the hollow walls, the after-
taste of recycled air. In the beginning, what did we know
of confinement? Evicted from our only home, we grew
hanging gardens in the air shaft, neo-meat
in the replicator, grew nosy about our neighbours’
water consumption. Erase purchasing
power and private schools, the only
social stratification left is views
of unshielded skies. It’s hard to avoid
the biblical in this flying coffin. 1000 mainly
strangers cramped in a donut town orbiting
the engine. The first death was an accident, a lost
child unstrapped in acceleration bled
out into boxed air. We mourned
with stricter curfews and a new kind
of funeral rite for the unburiable dead.
Nisa Malli is a writer and researcher, born in Winnipeg and currently living in Toronto. She holds a BFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and has completed residencies at the Banff Centre and Artscape Gibraltar Point. Her first chapbook, Remitting, is forthcoming from Baseline Press in Fall 2019.
