fatherfriendlover

i swear to every god i dont believe in, sometimes i just want to be an idiot savant artist and never love anyone and never want anything but the chips of paint beneath my fingernails. want to believe that shit gets less complicated? that it was easier when you were a lil thing, all bruised knees and crooked candy-rotted grins? me too, but. i was never that. i dont know, it follows you around like a sick kicked dog, those memories. the ones i have to remember that not everyone has. what do you mean you never hid under the table, watching him in that indigo morning light, aint-shit kitchen, the nights hed come home late? you mean you never stayed there for hours for fear and fascination of broad callused hands? fascination, yeah. he wasnt so big. but you were - you are - real small. and now when she asks you, whatre you thinking about, when she curves her whole self in your direction and waits, you dont know what the hell it means. i lay there and resist the urge to scrawl maps and tear red yarn with my teeth and pin it from third grade to licked hipbones to hearing how youre gonna be tortured in hell and i cant. thinking of? well, homework. and insignificance: how much space is in an atom. and how i probably cant touch anyone how they want to be touched, or talk perfect, or think or write or make anything anymore, how even when i could it was half-drowned and hysterical. im thinking of the metal in your body that i tongue too soft. and empty. and how the colors of your room feel under the surface of my skin: wriggling, elderly, rough, singsong. next time i say nothing, know that i mean it with a mouthful of crimson string.

you left for work half an hour ago and im still lying in your bed

tell me something i dont know play a record i havent heard give me a new scar something to trace idly with a fingertip once you are gone

my city is big

my city is big not in the scale of its buildings but in the cavernous touch of dawn there is traffic here - in swallowtail murmurs and the babble of young voices and the whir of bike tires on worn pavement the sky at night is busy with the conversations of stars (but youre bored with that metaphor) and the grass whispers cool and sharp against bare ankles the longing for heat never goes away not really not heat in light but warmth in the dark, thats what we teach ourselves now turn off the lights maybe barricade the door cover the windows close your eyes because maybe you will see me better like this

i will help in the ways i can

there is grit in every crease of your closed eyes. the wind has never stopped blowing here, but that doesnt keep you from bearing down, digging your fingers into the ground, humming a home song in the deep of your lungs. once or twice - maybe three times - you felt a sound gripping your throat, uncoiling talons of molten glass into the crevices of your ears. jaw creaking as you bit down. teeth moaning like a ship at storm. i threaded black-eyed susans through the nest of your hair, because these things pass, because to hold your hand id have to wrest it from the earth. because when you look at me you hear falling, tripping. the hard hollow sound of flesh on wood. but when i look at you i hear the rush of every layer of every atmosphere and i hold the waves under my tongue and when they melt i close my fists i close them harder i cut into my palms to keep you keep the ghost of you keep the things i stole from you with me. you dont like me but i know you mark the passage of time with my cuts and scars and breath. and ill stay here with you but i will keep my eyes open. the wind is relentless and there is grit in every corner of them our closed eyes. and i will stay here.

i only write for my mother

i only write for my mother constantly i wish the trees would bend to give her shade would stretch blooming over her path in greeting but more often than not she kneels at their roots and plucks weeds. her knees ache. there is no god. i used to think - i thought yesterday - that my words had left me, maybe for good, maybe forever see i can't write words longer than a few syllables now and all my matephors are for rocks and trees and all i think about is sinew and bone and i can remember my dreams now and i have nightmares but i realized that i write for my mother that i only write words i know she will understand i hate that i told you that i hate the sticky gasp of assumptions i can see congealing at the back of your skull my mother speaks four languages - bengali, hindi, urdu, and english and you, after four years of high school spanish, can barely string together, "dnde est el bao?" my mother draws fish on envelopes while talking on the phone our house is a river frantic with the tilapia that die in her homeland my mother calls every day, and i only pick up once a week we talk pleasantries she reminds me to eat, and to be good, and to pray, and to eat both of us sound sad and tired by the end. i never forget to tell her that i love her. when i am home, i remember that the bengali word for, "i'm leaving" is the same as the word for, "i'm coming" what must it be like to arrive at the shining city on the hill only to find the gates locked? not to everyone, just to you? you learn to worry at steel with your fingernails. you learn that rust tastes like blood. ami ashtesi, ammu. i'm coming. i'm leaving. i promise. my mother has borne six bodies through her own: one came freshly dead. she raised her parents. then her siblings. then her husband. then her children. now she raises the babies of white women. i do not miss being a child. i don't think she does either. i don't think we know what it was supposed to be like

but you can be sure that in all my blurry Kodaks, my dresses are covered in flowers and sewn by her hands what can i tell you about fractured brown woman bodies without you fracturing them further? my mother is not here to be easily digested. do not dissolve her in your acid, break her into pieces, gape at her through bars you built. just so you can say you understand. i write for my mother now my fingers get cold when i type and so i write for gnarled arthritic knuckles, soon to be mine for the hands that used to pull my waist-length hair into a heavy braid every unwilling public school morning for our matching deep-set eye sockets (when we are tired we seem to melt, both of us and she loses the weight that i gain) i mean i've stopped praying, but i'm growing out my hair again.