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I confess, you rarely speak with confidence. You reply, I know. I’m terrified of traffic jams, the resulting pileups. But we all know how eloquent you can be and often are. With great eloquence comes great responsibility, you tell me, not spoiling a single syllable, not spilling an ounce of the ruby hibiscus tea you hold in your grasp.
Read MoreI do not know what it means
or of the blue station wagon
which carried us, kicking up gravel
over the hill, sun glaring menacingly
into our soft new faces.
Our parting was genetically predestined.
Two grandparents, my mother; my uncle’s
turned itself inside out at twenty-seven.
It took five years of GP appointments
and physio and scans to determine
that you were the reason I would wake
in the night with a wing of pain
amma cuts me fruit / uses this apology / tells me / i’m sorry / as if we’re always whole / amma
tells me / cue up bones / as if watching forensic anthropologists / heals all wounds / jevayala ye /
because coming to eat / erases earlier yells / queen’s necklace calls, mother / it’s saying / forgive
me / seven times / until i’m forgiven / amma hates that i love / (a boy from kerala)
If I could wish one thing
It would be to go to Costco with my parents
I called them today
They were there,
Shopping for broccoli and cheddar dishes,
Roast chickens en masse,
Telling me what they’d discovered
Losing each other in wonderment
Finding each other in the chip aisle
all night we were crossing the ocean
none of us could see
through the dark egg windows
far below us the baleen were
rolling in the deep we
were tired but could not sleep
That life is but the dream
half remembered,
half made up,
never entirely certain to whom
(or is it to who?)
the question of belonging belongs.
Pink moon chattering brightly
draws me out of hiding,
using the same gentle trick she pulls on the tides.
Pink moon chattering brightly
draws me out of hiding,
using the same gentle trick she pulls on the tides.
She is daydreaming again, soft things that will never be put to good use–
sunlight and coffee rings and work that won’t get done.
She wishes she had more answers and less time, was better at making choices,
understood what her choices even were.