Banana Leaves Do Not Pray

A Song of Nang Tani: The Banana Tree Spirit

By Heidi Rong

the banana trees do not protest—  

they cradle themselves,  

green limbs warping like swaddled prayers,  

long-throated and soft-spined, 

saints before the ruin.

they have seen this before.

a man: his spine, not strong, 

just unwilling to bend,

carved with the kind of 

certainty, that rots quiet things.

with eyes that do not blink, 

he strides—  

pressing heel into loam,

as if earth itself had no soul.

his breath, acrid—  

the heat, the rusty-thick bravado

little boys wear 

like second skin—  

sweat, yes,  

and hunger, yes,  

but not for fruit,

not for forgiveness,

not for what bleeds when touched.

he sculpted his wife into numbness,  

not with hands,  

but with the precision of words  

that shaped her like a stone  

too familiar with the sea,

until her breath  

forgot the weight of a word unsaid.

he does not look down.

does not feel how the earth pulls back,  

how the leaves claw light  

from the moon in crooked strokes.

nang tani

she: green-veiled, wrist-willow,  

elbows angled slightly inward,

a posture not learned, but inherited,

stands within the hush.

she does not speak—  

she: not silk spooled into form,  

but stitched—crudely, precisely—

from skimmed milk, burn-warmed coins,  

and waxy candle carcasses.

skin, the pale slick of fruit,

not green, but green-tinted— 

left too long to rot in its artificial warmth,

not quite bruised,  

but soft—

in that way fruit learns before 

it falls.

his breath stumbles—  

a wick half-drowned in wax,

some ancient god in him  

still stirring: leave.

but he won’t.

he is not sorry. 

obstinate child.

and she does not move—  

not yet.

her dress carries the moon  

like a chalice,  

her hands twin altars,  

she is the blade  

and the breath before it.

he walks wrong,  

smells wrong,  

thinks himself alone. 

later—  

the ants will come,  

their legs clicking like 

feeble twigs under silk,  

a procession without witnesses.

only now will his bones

remember  

how to 

sink.

the soil will not mourn—  

only open.

the trees will not speak—  

only close,  

tighter.

they’ve held stories longer than 

gods.

in the morning, the village will open its mouth

not to him—  

not to the shape he left behind,  

not to the wound haloing the ground,  

a second sun burned wrong.

they will bow,  

but only because their spines remember  

what their mouths forget,

because grief has posture.

they will tilt their heads,  

throats angled like wind-pressed reeds, 

exposed. 

glassy syllables—  

paper-thin,  

folded wrong,

and passed hand to hand,

debts they had forgotten 

they owed.

words—  

ritual-thin—  

splinter in their mouths,  

each one  

a stalk of dry sugarcane  

shattered in the jaws of monsoon.

they will arrive—  

palms cradling  

small, meagre offerings:  

rice, syrupy with childhood,

flowers leeched,  

prayers worn to opulence 

by hands.

they will kneel—  

yes,  

but not to the body,  

not to the man.

only to the idea  

of balance.

their lips—  

salt-rimmed,  

flaky, 

with the practice  

of keeping quiet—  

will recite hymns  

they do not believe.

but still,  

they will speak—

as if the mouth,  

once set loose,  

can circle back into meaning.

afterwards—  

they will sweep the dirt,  

as if erasure were mercy,  

as if blood could be cleaned  

by morning chores.

children will be told  

to sip their tea  

with their two small hands,

to leave a stick of incense 

unlit, 

to keep one grain of sticky rice  

untouched,

and when asked why, 

they will blink once—  

slow, deliberate—  

nang tani

Artwork by Katia Hales: