Why?
Mother,
Whys is the grass green?
Why is the sky blue?
Why is the world big?
Why do people say its small too?
Why do people die?
Why are babies born young?
Why are there taste buds?
In my tongue?
Why do I weep?
When I cut my knee?
Why does one and one make two and not three?
And why, mummy,
Just one more,
When father left,
The journey ahead looks pretty far
I'll just play here and be the star!
Away from reality, living the fantasy
How beautiful my world can be!
Tim, ready your sword and let us fight the monster
I'll be the warrior and you'll be the hunter
And let us find the happily ever after!
Let us play, and play until mom brings us home
I miss my dad, he told me he will be fighting
Day after day, I keep on writing
Letters for him to show how I miss him
And how mom bought me ice cream!
Two months has passed and a man came at the door
And said that my father charged into the core
He told my mother, that dad is no more
I ran into my room, and cried on the floor
the prompt stared at me big and bold
random letters on a thin sheet of paper
small and inconsequential
"What do you want to be different in your life in five years? How would you change it?"
normally i bullshit my way through these essays
basic cookie-cutter answers guaranteed every year
that deflect what's really in my
soul
but this time i was honest with myself
and strangers who'd never really know me
bound by anonymity
my mother found it in the mail
re-sent with a letter of congratulations
and i spent that night
bruised and scolded
reminded once again that feelings are meant to be buried deep down
in the dead of night
under a black-blue-purple sky
she ripped me away from my home
the only thing i ever knew
she smothered me with her shirt to stop the cries
bound my hands to end my desperate scratches
held up that ragged rabbit i kept beside my bed
and told me i was safe
that she was my hero
no matter what anyone else said
everything i've ever loved-
my mom,
pillow forts in the living room,
having my hair brushed,
butterfly kisses,
my dad,
suffocating hugs,
laughing until i can't breathe,
tickle fights,
stargazing,
my amorcito,
a home-
has become everything i've ever lost.
why?
why can't i keep a semblance of happiness in my life?
do i not deserve it?
You will never again be this alone or alive,
Near your mother lying dead in the breakdown lane,
And you in the travel lane, trying to stand on spindly legs,
A fawn among the speeding headlights, mystified.
How did you get here? who licked you clean?
Will you, too, be hit? If not, who’ll suckle you?
Will a highway crew or highway crows recycle you?
I cannot sleep for thinking of you.
How silly is it of science
To say that senses are only five!
How insensitive is it of science
To censure those beyond the ken!
Eyes screwed up tightly
Head turned sideways abruptly
Lips clamped firmly
Trying to shut in momentarily.
Would it, please, go away
Images, sounds, the smells,
Words uttered, heard, this sense
Of pain, wrenching my heart?
Time exists only in our minds
In the recesses of memory
Facts of past and fictions of future
Time stands still only for those
Onam*- festivities and happiness,
Dresses in colour, TVs and fridges
Cars and bikes in a spending spree.
Respite from a life, lived mundane.
Onam, my first, without my mother
Forty-six Onams I spent with her.
Her age not counted in mouthfuls of rice1
Her last was a ball for the crow to eat.2
Onam- a week a year, from one to next
Sky so blue and fields so green.
Clouds have gone, weather is mild
Onam will come, the dead will not.
But trees do flower, waters do rise,
Hills turn green, despite the droughts.
They mightn’t be the same, yet they are,
Despite the deaths, life doesn’t end.
Listening to friends talking about their mothers;
One said – “She’s eighty, still hale and hearty,
Got to go home for dinner with her”.
Before he could continue, the other said,
“Mine is eighty too, she’s OK,
Though a bit slow in walking”.
Men of my age. Silent, I calculate -
If my mother were alive,
She’d be eighty three.
I wished she had married younger
And I were born first, so that
I could’ve spent, at the most
A bit more time with her.
Now that she’s gone
I wish she weren’t
Though there were times when alive
I hate that I have diabetes
I hate that I have anger
I hate that I have medical problems
I hate that my family teams up on me
I hate that my mom doesn't help me
I hate that noone doesnt help me
Was rough
I was teased
I was raped
I was pregnant
I was made fun of
I was left out
I was trouble in school
I was abused by alot of men
I was handcuffed a few times
I was never arrested
I never had any friends
I went to a special needs school
I had fights everyday
I had a miscarriage
I lost alot of loved ones
I had alot going on
Some woman
Somewhere
Who almost
Nobody knows
Knows more than
Almost anyone is aware
She must exist
In small towns
On unlikely streets
Or next door
to your memory
Which childhood friend's mother
Was she
Wiser than your own
Some lady that you would recall
In unfamiliar kitchens making jello