After the Honeymoon, Home, and: Dressing for Diwali
Rent from DeepDyve- After the Honeymoon, Home, and: Dressing for Diwali
After the Honeymoon, Home
II've been cleaning all day, wipingcountertops, sills, and tops of tvs.
Sperm can live in you for three days,you remind me. I know, like dustcollecting on your favorite book, I tell you.
IIWe've been killingmy mother's mint plantfor weeks, taking turnsbeing parents:Water, my milkA small ledge, a criban offer of all our pleasant places.Now, it's another Tuesdayand we have made a dryMedusa mess. I shower,think about adoption,take a three-mile walkbefore noticing two dogsshepherding one hundredgoats in the park—chosen, electedto eat invasive kudzu, wherea mint plant grows wildlywithout us. [End Page 182]
IIIBefore you were born,I saw both of youas toddlerskneelingunder a windowof reds and yellowsof Jesus the Shepherd.I think you will love
lambs like he did—in foreign placesin this stained-glass windowin almost shattered pieces.
IVThe world gets smallerwhen you're in the city.The city gets smallerwhen you're plantingtulips in your backyard—
imagining yourself a sower,a gardener of two little figuresof speech, formed in a smallframe of dust— (oh, unimaginable God!)you both came and stayedfor more than one night. [End Page 183]
Dressing for Diwali
First, there is this skin you gave me.This brown speckled hyper— that's what they say—pigmentation.This dry sand, flour dusted calvesfrom sitting Indian style, a familiar placebehind my knees: a black fan of skin.
This is what you gave meafter the garden full of sun: a paisley pattern(A glory to God? For these dappled things?) this cross-stitch in goldless seams.
*
You can't tell me
you don't remember
our first confession:
my hands piled
on my calf,
birthmark
barely covered.
I tried to tell you
before you noticed. [End Page 184]
I tried to tell you
my mother believes
it was the radish
sandwiches she ate.
She says they stain
so easily.
*
Here are the tears of things:my mother hemming the frayededges of her old cotton purple sari for me—timidly tucking in the excess to form a clean,deep-seated seam, trying to make it all lookright. Across the room, I yawp stopdon't— If I wear the blue one,I will feel guilty.
*
She tells us stories of a godat the beginning, making our skinlike dosas and sambar,ready hands on a hot stove.
This god toasts sesame seedsin a metal pot. When they burn,as they often do, he tosses themto the south, she says—their graves madebefore they were born. When he tries again, [End Page 185]
our persistent maker of coconut chutneys turnsthe heat off too soon and we are leftwith everything as it was created—raw and white.
Here, in this story, we are supposed to believe thatwe were made well: a perfect skin (can we say that?)after continents left to god's sowing and throwing. Tale
stories, a village of histories, a long oral tradition of oneepic after another, a story hoping to feel like the middleof my parents' bed, the smell of cardamom in the kitchenduring afternoon chai breaks, summers at the shaded pool
where all I can remember is one thing: changinginto my black bathing suit and trying to cover, cover,cover—let's not make this into a skin story, too—But what about my legs? Compliments on being fairand lovely? What about North and South India?And here? What about the celebration of placesthat taste like yogurt but smell like curry?
*
Eighteen shades of shadow and not one suits meon Diwali. My mother holds my face, fixes what I don't.My lips are too dark—
Blush on meand I remember the day I got baptizedin an oak church on Easter. Love kept me—even when everything around me was white—knee deep in holy water. I wanted...
