Shakshi Kumar
TUESDAY
I want to tell you
about how it feels to grow
under halogen, I want to
tell you how it feels to turn
eighteen, nineteen, even twenty
and not know the difference
between atman and aag,
shruti and smriti,
between puja and prayer. I watch
my mother, sober, swing open
the vedas and speak of what I don’t understand.
she’s burning incense in front
of a dead relative’s
picture demanding that I pray
to whom, I do not know. I see smoke rise
from ceramic tiles and tangle
in her curls before climbing out the skylight. I
unfurl my fingers in intervals as if to say
what’s the point? in communicating
to the cosmos, when
the cosmos stopped listening.
But I don’t say this.
I’ll always remember greased stovetops and the way
a flame can circumnavigate a mandir
like science. I’ll remember leaving
grand avenue abandoned, no home
to return to. My mother makes each hotel
holy, sutures scriptures through ceiling tiles
insisting that if I am on both knees
pouring puja into open palms, this will all be over.
I don’t believe her.
I want to tell you how it feels
when each syllable escapes your lips slow
and flawed and you must take it back
through the mouth,
through each lung, and inhale
until it combusts.
Sakshi Kumar holds a BA in English Literature from SUNY Geneseo. She currently serves as a poetry reader for Bodega. This is her first poetry publication. You can find her on Twitter at @sakshikumar_