The Sun and Her Flowers Read online

  does not rest between pages

  written by holy men

  my god

  lives between the sweaty thighs

  of women’s bodies sold for money

  was last seen washing the homeless man’s feet

  my god

  is not as unreachable as

  they’d like you to think

  my god is beating inside us infinitely

  advice i would’ve given

  my mother on her wedding day

  you are allowed to say no

  years ago his father beat the language of love

  out of your husband’s back

  he will never know how to say it

  but his actions prove he loves you

  go with him

  when he enters your body and goes to that place

  sex is not dirty

  no matter how many times his family brings it up

  do not have the abortion just because i’m a girl

  lock the relatives out and swallow the key

  he will not hate you

  take your journals and paintings

  across the ocean when you leave

  these will remind you who you are

  when you get lost amid new cities

  they will also remind your children

  you had an entire life before them

  when your husbands are off

  working at the factories

  make friends with all the other

  lonely women in the apartment complex

  this loneliness will cut a person in half

  you will need each other to stay alive

  your husband and children will take from your plate

  we will emotionally and mentally starve you

  all of it is wrong

  don’t let us convince you that

  sacrificing yourself is

  how you must show love

  when your mother dies

  fly back for the funeral

  money comes and goes

  a mother is once in a lifetime

  you are allowed to spend

  a couple dollars on a coffee

  i know there was a time when

  we could not afford it

  but we are okay now. breathe.

  you can’t speak english fluently

  or operate a computer or cell phone

  we did that to you. it is not your fault.

  you are not any less than the

  other mothers with their

  flashy phones and designer clothing

  we confined you to the four walls of this home

  and worked you to the bone

  you have not been your own property for decades

  there was no rule book for how

  to be the first woman in your lineage

  to raise a family on a strange land by yourself

  you are the person i look up to most

  when i am about to shatter

  i think of your strength

  and harden

  i think you are a magician

  i want to fill the rest of your life with ease

  you are the hero of heroes

  the god of gods

  in a dream

  i saw my mother

  with the love of her life

  and no children

  it was the happiest i’d ever seen her

  - what if

  you split the world

  into pieces and

  called them countries

  declared ownership on

  what never belonged to you

  and left the rest with nothing

  - colonize

  my parents never sat us down in the evenings to share stories of their younger days. one was always working. the other too tired. perhaps being an immigrant does that to you.

  the cold terrain of the north engulfed them. their bodies were hard at work paying in blood and sweat for their citizenship. perhaps the weight of the new world was too much. and the pain and sorrow of the old was better left buried.

  i do wish i had unburied it though. i wish i’d pried their silence apart like a closed envelope. i wish i’d found a small opening at its very edge. pushed a finger inside and gently torn it open. they had an entire life before me which i am a stranger to. it would be my greatest regret to see them leave this place before i even got to know them.

  my voice

  is the offspring

  of two countries colliding

  what is there to be ashamed of

  if english

  and my mother tongue

  made love

  my voice

  is her father’s words

  and mother’s accent

  what does it matter if

  my mouth carries two worlds

  - accent

  for years they were separated by oceans

  left with nothing but little photographs of each other

  smaller than passport-size photos

  hers was tucked into a golden locket

  his slipped inside his wallet

  at the end of the day

  when their worlds went quiet

  studying them was their only intimacy

  this was a time long before computers

  when families in that part of the world

  had not seen a telephone or laid their

  almond eyes on a colored television screen

  long before you and i

  as the wheels of the plane touched tarmac

  she wondered if this was the place

  had she boarded the right flight

  should’ve asked the air hostess twice

  like her husband suggested

  walking into baggage claim

  her heart beat so heavy

  she thought it might fall out

  eyes darting in every direction

  searching for what to do next when

  suddenly

  right there

  in the flesh

  he stood

  not a mirage—a man

  first came relief

  then bewilderment

  they’d imagined this reunion for years

  had rehearsed their lines

  but her mouth seemed to forget

  she felt a kick in her stomach

  when she saw the shadows circling his eyes

  and shoulders carrying an invisible weight

  it looked like the life had been drained out of him

  where was the person she had wed

  she wondered

  reaching for the golden locket

  the one with the photo of the man

  her husband did not look like anymore

  - the new world had drained him

  what if

  there isn’t enough time

  to give her what she deserves

  do you think

  if i begged the sky hard enough

  my mother’s soul would

  return to me as my daughter

  so i can give her

  the comfort she gave me

  my whole life

  i want to go back in time and sit beside her. document her in a home movie so my eyes can spend the rest of their lives witnessing a miracle. the one whose life i never think of before mine. i want to know what she laughed about with friends. in the village within houses of mud and brick. surrounded by acres of mustard plant and sugarcane. i want to sit with the teenage version of my mother. ask about her dreams. become her pleated braid. the black kohl caressing her eyelids. the flour neatly packed into her fingertips. a page in her schoolbooks. even to be a single thread of her cotton dress would be the greatest gift.

  -
to witness a miracle

  1790

  he takes the newborn girl from his wife

  carries her to the neighboring room

  cradles her head with his left hand

  and gently snaps her neck with his right

  1890

  a wet towel to wrap her in

  grains of rice and

  sand in the nose

  a mother shares the trick with her daughter-in-law

  i had to do it she says

  as did my mother

  and her mother before her

  1990

  a newspaper article reads

  a hundred baby girls were found buried

  behind a doctor’s house in a neighboring village

  the wife wonders if that’s where he took her

  she imagines her daughter becoming the soil

  fertilizing the roots that feed this country

  1998

  oceans away in a toronto basement

  a doctor performs an illegal abortion

  on an indian woman who already has a daughter

  one is burden enough she says

  2006

  it’s easier than you think my aunties tell my mother

  they know a family

  who’ve done it three times

  they know a clinic. they could get mumma the number.

  the doctor even prescribes pills that guarantee a boy.

  they worked for the woman down the street they say

  now she has three sons

  2012

  twelve hospitals in the toronto area

  refuse to reveal a baby’s gender to expecting families

  until the thirtieth week of pregnancy

  all twelve hospitals are located in areas with high south asian immigrant populations

  - female infanticide | female feticide

  remember the body

  of your community

  breathe in the people

  who sewed you whole

  it is you who became yourself

  but those before you

  are a part of your fabric

  - honor the roots

  when they buried me alive

  i dug my way

  out of the ground

  with palm and fist

  i howled so loud

  the earth rose in fear and

  the dirt began to levitate

  my whole life has been an uprising

  one burial after another

  - i will find my way out of you just fine

  my mother sacrificed her dreams

  so i could dream

  broken english

  i think about the way my father

  pulled the family out of poverty

  without knowing what a vowel was

  and my mother raised four children

  without being able to construct

  a perfect sentence in english

  a discombobulated couple

  who landed in the new world with hopes

  that left the bitter taste of rejection in their mouths

  no family

  no friends

  just man and wife

  two university degrees that meant nothing

  one mother tongue that was broken now

  one swollen belly with a baby inside

  a father worrying about jobs and rent

  cause no matter what this baby was coming

  and they thought to themselves for a split second

  was it worth it to put all of our money

  into the dream of a country

  that is swallowing us whole

  papa looks at his woman’s eyes

  and sees loneliness living where the iris was

  wants to give her a home in a country that looks at her

  with the word visitor wrapped around its tongue

  on their wedding day

  she left an entire village to be his wife

  now she left an entire country to be a warrior

  and when the winter came

  they had nothing but the heat of their own bodies

  to keep the coldness out

  like two brackets they faced one another

  to hold the dearest parts of them—their children—close

  they turned a suitcase full of clothes into a life

  and regular paychecks

  to make sure the children of immigrants

  wouldn’t hate them for being the children of immigrants

  they worked too hard

  you can tell by their hands

  their eyes are begging for sleep

  but our mouths were begging to be fed

  and that is the most artistic thing i have ever seen

  it is poetry to these ears

  that have never heard what passion sounds like

  and my mouth is full of likes and ums when

  i look at their masterpiece

  cause there are no words in the english language

  that can articulate that kind of beauty

  i can’t compact their existence into twenty-six letters and call it a description

  i tried once

  but the adjectives needed to describe them

  don’t even exist

  so instead i ended up with pages and pages

  full of words followed by commas and

  more words and more commas

  only to realize there are some things

  in the world so infinite

  they could never use a full stop

  so how dare you mock your mother

  when she opens her mouth and

  broken english spills out

  don’t be ashamed of the fact that

  she split through countries to be here

  so you wouldn’t have to cross a shoreline

  her accent is thick like honey

  hold it with your life

  it’s the only thing she has left of home

  don’t you stomp on that richness

  instead hang it up on the walls of museums

  next to dali and van gogh

  her life is brilliant and tragic

  kiss the side of her tender cheek

  she already knows what it feels like

  to have an entire nation laugh when she speaks

  she is more than our punctuation and language

  we might be able to paint pictures and write stories

  but she made an entire world for herself

  how is that for art

  on the first day of love

  you wrapped me in the word special

  you must remember it too

  how the rest of the city slept

  while we sat awakened for the first time

  we hadn’t touched yet

  but we managed to travel in and out

  of each other with our words

  our limbs dizzying with enough electricity

  to form half a sun

  we drank nothing that night

  but i was intoxicated

  i went home and thought

  are we soul mates

  i feel apprehensive

  cause falling into you

  means falling out of him and

  i had not prepared for that

  - forward

  how do i welcome in kindness

  when i have only practiced

  spreading my legs for the terrifying

  what am i to do with you

  if my idea of love is violence

  but you are sweet

  if your concept of passion is eye contact


  but mine is rage

  how can i call this intimacy

  if i crave sharp edges

  but your edges aren’t even edges

  they are soft landings

  how do i teach myself

  to accept a healthy love

  if all i’ve ever known is pain

  i will welcome

  a partner

  who is my equal

  never feel guilty for starting again

  the middle place is strange

  the part between them and the next

  is an awakening from how you saw to

  how you will see

  this is where their charm wears off

  where they are no longer

  the god you made them out to be

  when the pedestal you carved out of your

  bone and teeth no longer serves them

  they are unmasked and made mortal again

  - the middle place

  when you start loving someone new

  you laugh at the indecisiveness of love

  remember when you were sure

  the last one was the one

  and now here you are

  redefining the one all over again

  - a fresh love is a gift

  i do not need the kind of love

  that is draining

  i want someone

  who energizes me

  i am trying to not

  make you pay for their mistakes

  i am trying to teach myself

  you are not responsible

  for the wound

  how can i punish you

  for what you have not done

  you wear my emotions

  like a decorated army vest

  you are not cold or

  savage or hungry

  you are medicinal

  you are not them

  he makes sure to look right at me

  as he places his electric fingers on my skin

  how does that feel he asks

  commanding my attention

  responding is out of the question

  i quiver with anticipation