The Ancient Eye

The ancient eye of a sycamore watches me each morning as I exercise on our elliptical machine. Its gaze holds the presence of all other spirits who lived here.

Other Mothers who knew that it was more than cooking, cleaning, or working outside the home.

Guardians who knew it was also about holding the key, unlocking the door, and stepping inside.

Guides

cut her in two and
she’ll flow around you
river thanks rock
for the temporary block

and o p e n i n g

Together

palm on my heart
reaching in
reaching deep
for where we’ve been

feeling the rhythm
of highs and lows
holding my hand
against the unknown

she wants to come
in

Do you hear what I hear?

She bought me stickers and clothes and hope
when she could not be there-
dolls with which I could practice mothering.
“Feed them and dress them and they’ll be ok”.

I would eat this knowledge with the holiday feast,
and wondered why the little parasite inside
needed more.

Growing up with my aunt and uncle, I was told
the same thing.
I had three parents. I was the luckiest girl.
Then why, why, why, was I so scared?

It’s scary when you swallow your screams,
and the only way to let them out
is by squeezing them through tiny ducts
at the corners of your eyes.

Maybe that’s why I have big bulging eyes.

My mother is here, lives with me,
still haunts me daily with her material
promises of presence.
She gives gifts of money and food
and time with my daughter when I am away.

I still wish she would listen.

I walk along the coast of this life, passing
all the shells with untold stories,
they’re voices whispering into the sea, muted
by the waves, the noise above.

Perhaps I will pass her shell, lift
her to my ear, and hear the story
of a woman ignored,
a woman who once asked her own Mother
to listen, too.

Do you hear what I hear?

Again

who are you
but a piece of legal paper
a husband by marriage
a man I once thought owned me

I wear your discontent
like black and white stripes
invisible ropes that tie me to you
your rage up close

I cannot look away

or is love a knife
that cuts the heart
and ropes in one slice
so I can stand just far enough

burned by the blaze
a small hole
I’ll always carry with me
dripping a trail of blood

a thin red line

tears wash stains away
I walk back to where
the smoke rises
and you stand

with open arms

Translation

My father wishes I read in Gujarati.
My mother reads in Gujarati.
I read in English.

My mother and I read at opposite ends
of the room. We stumble on words,
cracks in the pavement
of our vulnerabilities,
filling them with tears
for humanity and ourselves.

Her rolling characters that hold hands.
My h a r d l e t t e r s t h a t s t a n d a p a r t.

We read separately,
read each other across the room
and across the ocean of continents.
Between lines and cracks,
smeared with our tears
words are unintelligible.
The ink bleeds our names, our stories

into a black page.
What did it say
before we died from our differences
and read the same thing?

Rehearsal

Before her
I was a character in a play, waiting for
the curtains to rise so my audience –
past lovers and family and friends
would applaud my dress, my behavior,
my being,
approve of my right to exist on stage
while they all sat in plush judgment.
Novelty was blasphemous
and ideas of self were quickly whited out
back then, now deleted with a click of the mouse
or back space key.
“There is no room for this”, they would say.
“The script , read the script. Haven’t you rehearsed
this before?”
The play became so famous, that they asked
me to write a poem about it.
“Only if you let me tell them the truth”, I replied.
They stopped coming to see my act,
but I decided to write this anyway.

My daughter was born, and the curtains fell.
I wear what I want, I behave as I’d like, and I am
who she knows I always was.
Underneath the makeup, the clothes
the scripted soul trapped between pages
of someone else’s story,
I am here,
falling and flying
living and dying
on the words that feed this shell.

I am famous without them
with her watching,
asking me to do it again
so she learns to live
without a rehearsal.

Morning

After her milk, she takes my hand and leads me to the window. She smiles and points to joggers, strangers passing by. They wave to us as fingers flutter in between the leaves of our tree.

Pointing at us, pointing at them, there is no accusation. Only awareness. They know what my daughter and I do.

No one is truly a stranger.