8000 miles away
my sister is moving
her furniture is being taken apart now
it will be put back together again, very soon.
She remembers how I arrived at her
house in Delhi the week before she did,
how I cut my hand open unpacking boxes, how
I made that a joke about my rakta dan--"blood sacrifice."
I don't remember this story. But
she giggles and so then I giggle and then
we tell each other how much we love each other.
When will we see each other again? (There aren't even plans.)
And I want to say: Take a break!
Need to ask: Are you tired? Is that heavy?
But I look at the telephone; I just... miss you.
There's more air than we can breathe between us.
Exile now feels like breaking--
like an earthquake--inside out, fragile
as though an eggshell holding hatchlings,
a coming to--on the other side of worldliness.
There are stones in my throat all day
so I stumble. I speak slowly as though in
a foreign language (all language feels foreign,
cannot say what I feel, clots like moonlight in my brain).
I just parrot from poems I read:
"Art thou weary? Art thou weary?" I dream you
give the movers the address, but Bangalore traffic sounds
harmonize it into my name, send it--back in a whisper to you.
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