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The last time I saw you
you were nine,
your eyes two burnt cities,
your face one giant tear.
Castile soap could not undo
the Marlboro stench
sticking to your lips.
Standing beside you was your mother,
her entire body a past tense,
her face a pile of wronged yesterdays.

“I’m sorry what happened to Si-Abdullatif.
He was a good man.”
I stammered the words out,
my mouth suddenly marked out
like a crime-scene.
I could feel Abdullatif’s pickaxe eyes
puncturing the wall opposite me,
the entire house a faded watercolour
against the complexion of his rage.
Your mother sewed you onto her body,
taut as a waistband,
her breath smelling of stale prayers
and sour incantations.
She knows it too well;
the searching mouth of shame
rumpling her life since a little girl.

At 16,
your mother watched Abdullatif climb up
the ruffles on her nightgown
and wring the pulp
out of her thighs.
No other woman would make him eat
for the next forty years
like your mother.
Now Abdullatif is a framed photograph
piercing the front wall,
his face pinned to your mother’s chest,
chewing on tears
and stolen Marlboro smokes.

Blinded by my imagination,
Impurities cloud what known reality.
I wanted to touch heaven through a glass window.
A world on its own,
My curiosity plagued their holy temples.

Don’t try to sedate it with your ignorant reason,
when the horizon line is so clear

You tru and soothe me with parables,
Saying it’s better to endure life
Then risk what lies after.

Trapped in my own existence;
Yet I can still see something far beyond.
Open me up, look inside,
And find the same design.
A prisoned soul crippled by petty matter.

No priest could ignore his temptations,
No scientist their findings,
No doctor a flat heartbeat.
Why should I ignore my nature?

All I ask is to feed my curiosity,
No longer imagine what’s beyond the horizon.
Break the window, know freedom as I fall.
Was this my ninth life or the ninth hour?

I pleaded for a cure,
I begged for forgiveness,
Even learned from my mistakes.

I am grateful for petty matters,
Because without them, I can’t confess my crime.
I wouldn’t be able to read my final words.

I see me and you
and our trampled home-grass.

We stemmed from here,
damp growing seeds
climbing the fertile sun.

I grew tall and blew away.
Your season was cut short,
your body collapsing in place.

You rest in the dirt,
your sanctuary.

I feel the grass and remember:

You died before winter,

calm
dry
then wet.

A warm fragrant sprout,
your hand in a soft garden.

I saw the last minutes
Of a raven
saying farewell
to a beautiful world
neither good nor evil.
A raven curled up
in the days he had seen
His body was already cold
but his eyes clang
to a bird’s flight
before he spread his wings
one last time
and his head
fell to the ground

Today, a cloak of humankind you wear
Woven by hands of envy, celestial flair
Nature’s domains reflect your aura’s gleam
Leaves whisper secrets in a timeless dream

Logic’s dogma embraced with careful reason
In life’s symphony, shared threads in season
Celestial lineage, earthly claim combine
Realms interlaced where mortal and divine align

Claiming Earth’s lineage, a fleeting trace
Yet, resemblance echoes in life’s sweet embrace
Made human today, a journey intertwining
Divine threads in this earthly tapestry shining

Today, divinity and humanity interlace
A reflection in new design, masterminds in grace
No demigod’s vanity, just a wish to comprehend
Completeness you bring, my eternal friend

death is a shy thing
(he does not knock
just lingers
like a hush
between heartbeats)

he is not cruel—
only sure,
only the hand
that closes a book
(softly softly)

no hurry no fuss
just a step into light
or dark
(or neither)
& all the clocks
forget
our names.

but listen—
if you turn just right,
in the hush between rain & silence,
you will hear him breathing
(the way a candle
remembers fire
even when it is smoke).

There are many ways to kill infant girls, sometimes simply by refusing to hold them.
I developed allergies after my father died. Took me four years
to realize that
like a poisoned imprint, what remains of him is this, not
the embrace.

How in India, parents are not told the gender of their baby to eradicate female
infanticide, yet many are still abandoned in government cradles.

Once abandoned,
how do we unbroken ourselves into love?

My heart is a trap of
elaborate cravings,
enticing enough to draw in bugs,
yet insubstantial to be chosen,
a cadence of brokenness, its castoffs lying
on the floor like a collection of ebbing memories.

The erased faces from gender selection reveal parents who reject their girls, fathers who drown them, mothers who suffocate them, and entire families remain silent – a wrenching sorrow for abusive enduring traditions. The loud anguish of these girls silenced, as our coarse words fade into invisibility. The mother daughtering —a
whimsical denial of life.

women
mustn’t yell. If we love, let it be softly,
or else it’s too good to be true. If we grow older,
grow knowing love ends, because you might die before him.
If you make love, do it disinterested,
for if you find enjoyment, it ́s only to numb yourself – gods do not forgive a woman
who knows pleasure.

The abandoned babies are usually females. This aging unborn body—what makes it
unfit for lasting love? I, who loved a father, knowing I would end up alone, not even
dogs wanting to piss on my legs?

I start with the title,
driven by a greedy anger I ́ve learned to be ashamed of, but the truth is
I am enlarging grief, occupying
space like unending fields of mourning.
And moving slowly within the day,
a debris of gravitas – my personality the culprit,
unheld as if you wanted to kill a female baby in a cradle not of a mother’s making.

What is it about us, broken women, not made for long term?

After “Song for a Fifth Child (Babies Don’t Keep) by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, oh mother, put down your burp cloth.
Donate the diapers, shut off the wash,
Pack all the hats for tiniest of heads,
Sew up your heart and collapse baby’s bed.
Where is the one whose absence is so shocking?
We’re all still here waiting with empty arms, rocking.

She’s gone without even a “Good night, Gorilla”
(Hush, little darling, now don’t say a word).
She left only a small, empty pillow
(Daddy’s gonna hold you, sweet little bird).
Your home’s a better one and there’s nothing to do
But leave room in our hearts where we thought you grew,
Where we’re praying, loving, most missing you.
(Our little Mercy, we’ll hold this as true:
Our Father in Heaven is holding you.)

Goodbye, the life we hoped you’d still have tomorrow.
Some kids don’t grow up, as we’ve learned to our sorrow.
Farewell, little future. Dreams, go to sleep.
We’re mourning our baby, one we can’t keep.

Runs through the veins of almost all.
A curdling poison of sorts,
Spewing, rolling, tumbling,
Off lips and stirring in hearts.
Hatred words causing pain and grief to all.
Like drugs,
Making innocent sweetness,
Die in the hands of those hatred demons.
Toxicity ruins lives,
Relationships,
And poisons the innocent’s angelic eyes.
Turning in the membrane,
Toxicity burning fuel
In their hearts of the keeper.
Until their curdling dark blood
Falls.

Letting go,
As if it’s just release.
You’ll have to
Peel it off my skin
Scrape out
my insides.
I mean
it’s probably cellular,
By now,
epigenetic.

Numbers I didn’t understand
Mercurial memory
The nested fear springing up
Unexpectedly

I resent my own familiarity
With hospital bureaucracy
The voice to take
With a nurse or doctor
technician or administrator.

And the window I finally cracked open
Slammed shut
And there i am
ill-made
To make it through
What they call simple
Natural
Simple
“A natural birth”
Not ravaging
Brutal
A wrecking chaos
Instead they call you ill-made
They risk stratify
They look at you sadly
“Poor guy” they say
To the sound-image