I don’t meet expectations, no kitchen Goddess, an empty womb, no man to call my own (and would I, even call him that? Because no one is really anyone’s, I know this now), that shorn head, these unbendable toes, that flashing temper and tooth-pick legs, the sudden cheek-flushing embarrassment and […]
And you were out to sea. You had the sail open and the oar in your arms and the water was as clear and clean as a shirt on a line in the early morning. There was a touch of blue in the sky, a small warning, in the tiny […]
‘You have become quiet. You don’t say half as much as you did before. Your words, no longer, confetti.’ Because age brings out the fallacy in words. They’re not as reliable anymore. Words don’t mean what they say. They don’t capture truth, only act as cages for all the wrong […]
A piece about reading I did for Nal’ibali, a cool reading initiative in South Africa. http://nalibali.org/thankful-family-read/
I think it was my laugh. That hysterical gaggle from inside the throat that hits the air two seconds too long. It’s unladylike. Ungraceful. Too crude for someone with such small bones. I think it must have been my laugh. He looked at me and probably said that laugh is […]
November 2013 It’s so cold. I’m looking out the window at a skyline of rooftops. Small green gardens with rickety furniture. Dogs in the street. Someone on a bicycle. An auto rickshaw starting. A woman wrapped in a shawl walking down the road. We are getting ready to go out. […]
This. The breathing everyday, the waking up, the air forced into lungs, the feet under the ground, the way the hands slice bread to make sandwiches, the coffee down the throat, the momentary relief in an elevator alone, as the doors close, and at night, as sleep falls. The cupping […]
I am standing on the side of the road along parked cars. It’s my first night in Delhi; Diwali and the air is thick with smoke and noise and the promise of late-night parties and holiday. Thrown like confetti into the heart of a city after so much quiet coldness. […]
17 August 2013 I am sitting in a car. The driver (Saleem? Already names are eluding me) is playing some Pakistani song on the radio. It’s too modern, too racey for my father next to him. I sense my impending embarrassment, for who, I’m never sure. Perhaps sensing something, he […]
Paris, 17 February 1903 Dear Sir, … You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me that. You have asked others, before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you worry when certain editors turn your efforts down. Now (since you have allowed me […]
