Ghazal for the Wingless

Roaming the hinterlands of a language I cannot speak

I learn the separations, the amalgamation, the reparations

my body makes. In this, I am not alone, it seems.

Stirring pots of rice pudding & daal, my sisters curled

Their fingers inwards, heads swaying in the unholy heat.

The winter that came after, I started to cry in my sleep again,

But this time silently. Wrecked gems, flinging teeth

Caught in small hands before they scattered on the floor. Aasthe aasthe.

Everyone knows how to keep their pain quiet but me.

I make a racket every time, my face the daily tragedy of the 6 train.

And everyone knows: I have a body that sings itself into beast,

A body that takes takes takes, a body wanting to break more than anything.

Jism. Schism. Where was God when I needed to eat

& could only sink jagged nails into His earth instead? Where was God

When illness dug its way into me. When it turned everything into a stream

Of intangible objects, thrice-severed trajectories, the stillness

Inside the storm. To the taal of my brother’s tabla, the havoc He let me wreak.

Spinning loneliness into a love that could sustain nobody, not even

The smaller beings. Not even those with wings. Lightning bugs we’d keep

In jars with poked holes, imagining they understood their own beauty.

It is nearly winter now and I am holding myself closed at each seam.

My body remains a dull blade. My mind

begs strangers on the street for relief.