Prayer for The Lost

I’ve known women,
East Indian women
backs breaking, arms aching
scented with eu-de-masala
despite their daily baths.
These women have known the tradition-
guests are invited as gods;
everyone is well fed;
children are the priority.
Women are last,
stones at the ocean’s bottom
where sunlight never reaches them,
never crowns their sacred being.

Once in a while, they wash ashore
secretly hoping a stranger
will take them home,
place them on an altar
near Lakshmi or Allah
or Jesus or Buddha.
Then maybe, just maybe
their lives will mean something
more than their own shadow
standing behind them,
the one they’ve never known.

I’ve known women,
East Indian women-
my mothers and aunts and grandmothers,
my patients,
myself.

I vow to find my own halo,
to be the stranger taking them
home,
to create altars
for each and every drowned soul
each and every goddess in disguise.

After all, I am The Sun.


(Thank you Esalen and Alison Luterman for providing the sanctuary.)

Transformation

suffering within
a caterpillar
waiting

I have spent years suffering from within. I have recurrent dreams of failing tests. The latest test I am failing is my inability to banish suffering.

What if I love her? That part of me that was once perceived as cancer, an undesired growth inside. What if I hug her and let her stay hospitably?

I can see her colors emerging, a hint of healing dawn after black suffering.

I don’t want to kill her anymore.

I'm passing the test.