my grandmother’s jewelry
she lays a platter of chains in front of me
the kind that detach that connect that
won’t break when my hands become
razor-speech
they just lie there as pointed words do
when it is too cold to multiply
my grandmother’s eyes lie upon me
fixed to the gold asking me to pick
a color pick a shape pick a luster to bury
my ash body
this is what my skin would look like
if it shone
but my eyes disarm stop to pass through
the plastic crystals
how is it that india is home to so many
snow-diamonds
& i am still the color
of shineless gold
vegetables
the first time my mother sends me to buy groceries
i come back weeping it’s just the rain i say
but really it is the vegetables that i have pared
& eaten with my right hand the hand that speaks only
malayalam that i cannot translate these vegetables
i have already named once cannot rename them
because food is Saraswati Devi & i must learn to
buy vegetables without knowing their english names
that day my mother feeds me lunch bitter melon cut
& feathered with spices snake gourd sliced & curled
at the edges she places each piece at the center
of my tongue & readily my mouth curls into a wound
a lesson on colonization & genocide
there is a misconception that blood
does not leak through these surfaces
that these colors absorb the burning
red of blood & leave you a river
of obedience this is not a science
science says that blood leaks
through brown cloth the same way
that blood leaks through white cloth
& still this is not a geography
this is a recipe for alienation that
does not even require a second planet
instead you make aliens out of people
on your own world but you cannot
change the viscosity of blood you
can only make us bleed you cannot
make our blood this is an identity
what if i realized that my blood tastes
the same as your blood & what if
i made my own recipe from this
would you hide your leaking blood
like you made us do
***
Photograph provided courtesy of author.
