Your eyes adjust as you enter, soft, the cave, dull, the light fuzzy through the space between
cedar slats. Suspended water droplets sparkle and rainbows fill your nostrils, your throat. You
feel the stratified heat, cooler at your feet lifted in layers to the tingle at your ears. Through the
steam the elders’ faces are hazy, sweat dripping in lines and creases. Eyes open or closed, a silent
nod and a fresh ladle on the coals. They keep coming, whipping your face and burning your eyes,
hot breath of the spirits that live there. You can hear their song in the crackles, smoldering rocks
and the heartbeats of prayer. Your fingers are raisins and bumps rise, flatten across your skin.
The warmth seeps beneath its slick surface, blood flowing fast fire until you are loose, slack, the
burdens floating off, away. Eventually you are aware of the beating in your chest each breath
short, shallow, outside drinking in the crisp, a wing for each lung.
Tatiana Chaterji is an emerging writer born on Ohlone land in Berkeley, California – formerly known as “Finn Town,” a community that has nourished her cultural roots in both Finland and Bengal. Tatiana is an educator, restorative justice practitioner, healing-based theater arts facilitator, and the mother of two small children. She was a 2017 VONA Playwriting Fellow, with poems and essays featured or forthcoming in Panorama, The Rush, and Seventh Wave. Learn more at www.tatianachaterji.com.