Poem - Kumar

 

 

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_