Onam 2019

It is Onam.
I ought to be home.
I ought to be running into the embrace of my mother's warm gaze, long before her arms close around me. I ought to be hearing the comfort of my father's voice bubbling through the paan that he refuses to give up. I ought to be breathing in sunlight and salt filtered through petrichor and tea.
I ought to be home.
Home is a strange name to call a place I have barely lived in. My memories are cultured in the petridish of distance. My tongue clatters awkwardly foreign around the syllables and sounds of my land (though my 'L's always betray my origins). I am forever the outsider inside. Forever the traveller stopping by. Forever carrying 'home' in a backpack.
But it is my birthright.
No label, no paper, no misguided order can erase the roots that go deep into ourselves. My blood carries the sweetness of tender coconut water, my bones the stubbornness of teak, my flesh the pliancy of banana stem. When I land on that soil, the ground greets my feet like a mother kissing a newborn's feet, welcoming me home.

I have what so many of my countrymen are being denied. I have what so many need to prove to be able to touch.  I have something that no one ought to be able to take away from you. I have it.
And I am not everyone

How can I go home, when so many cannot?

Permission to Speak

Words
Words were the only things you would accept
and so I mined words from every corner of my being.
I poured a flood of words at your feet
and then warmed them with more words
like glowing embers
like hope
I threw words in the air like colour,
red as the blood in my veins,
red as the blood I would give you
if you would ask it of me.
red as the dawn that won't be denied
and red as the haze before my eyes

Now
The embers have burned out.
the flood has turned into poison mud
clogged with the carcasses
of words that died of heartbreak
bloodless and cold.

And you stand rooted
in a murk of my making.
What can I say to you
when there is nothing left of paradise
 in my song
what can I give you
when all the words have grown empty
as hollow hope

I am sorry
My words are hubris
My flaw is innocence
What can I give you now?

Thoughts after Illness

My body is soft
 like old-fashioned mochi
pounded into a semi-fluid comfort.
missing all the pleasing angles and panes
that would deem it beautiful.
Or  strong.

It is a deception this mochi softness.
My body is tough.
Like over-chewed chewing gum
that will make your jaws ache
but will deny you the comfort of an end.

My body gives the best hugs.
No sharp bones or hard muscle;
Because it is built to absorb
shocks and pain--
both mine and others'

My body is formed like the blot of ink;
that drop of paint
that fell on the page
and formed its own shape.
Spread itself out to cover
 as much as it could,
claiming room for me.

My body
 wraps itself in malleable layers
around me,
protecting me
in its fierce softness
that swallows every horrible thing
said about it
by me and by others,
and refuses to buckle.
It fights daily to keep me alive
intractable in its mission;
Every scar willfully obscured
Every ache denied.

And every once in a while
when it falters
in its illusion of sovereign protection,
It stutters and stumbles,
 bewildered by its weakness
like a flower discovering gravity,
like a child discovering
 that it is not  loved by everyone
Or an adult
Discovering she is loved.
The mochi softness folds in on itself.
waiting for the storm to pass.
Waiting for me to say something.

My body--
small
soft
imperfect
and mine.
You are not what I wished for
I am not what you wished for
We are what we've got.