Porcelain Dust

“We spoke of genealogy and heirlooms; we each had a memento – Katriona’s a figurine cracked in half, mine a single whiskey glass, its twin shattered to bits in a suitcase. We spoke of ourselves as migrants, carrying the dead with us in porcelain, plaster and glass – the brittle old bones of our portable ancestors. I read about an ancient mortuary unearthed in Bolivia, used by nomadic llama drovers whose itinerant existence meant they couldn’t revisit grave sites. Boiled in quicklime the flesh and fat melted away, and once exposed to the air turned into plaster, setting free the bones to be carried as relics.”

Shubigi Rao, 2015