Prep Mode

These guys kept me company while I got some Thanksgiving dinner prep done today. As At pointed out, this picture encapsulates them perfectly: Huck can barely contain herself and Scout is pretending stoicism.

It's going to be so strange doing a Thanksgiving with just us. We each picked a dish, and that gave us a more tightly edited menu, but it's not exactly spare. So far, my cranberry chutney turned out amazing (extra onion, apple, and fresh ginger... yum). No one actually asked for it, but what else am I going to goop over the roast root veggies which were my pick?!

Also keeping me company--EM's pistachio baklava. She had "extra" and brought me a whole plateful. I am so thankful.

Curling into an ending

Kiss the day with mother-tongue

HumHymnOm to morning

parse words from sounds

through the day.

To Sleep

How did I not get here earlier--

Was I just riding skies

instead of seas--

Sadness and gladness are cruel 

sirens, crossing countries

with me, waiting

near the cave that is my mind.

Do you hear me? Hear me!

Bear me forward.

I hymn you in the old ways

drowsily exhaling light

breaking like the day. 

Out and about

Today I want to write a poem that will not be about dying 

maybe something something being in community 

about being connected and continuing

About holding my arms out like a tree even when empty

(stop that!) about sending all my pain to the sea, 

where it's already salty

By day I will read something lofty, edifying, clear

At night, I will watch stars that seem cold 

and know they're really quite fiery

Alert with my intention, my asylum of inattention

I sling myself to beauty, ignore summer's

pillows smattered with snow

Afterglow

 

Voting rights and travel +

 

Within Without

Please hold my head as gently 

as a bomb labeled 'headache'

knowing the earth is waiting

feeding time under the loam

who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)

who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)

howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster

learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss

For in a different world 

I lost many months ago

my tongue a tombstone

fingers clawing worms

Full

My babies are beautiful. 

(These human babies and also the two puppy babies asking for scraps by my side.)

At's Home

It's a school night and Nu had to head to bed at 9, but Scout and Huck (and Big A and I) gave At a proper bonkers welcome when he got home from college. (We'd asked him to come home last week when the number of active cases had spiked on campus, so he tied up a few organizing loose ends and agreeably headed back.)

Our governor has mandated no in-person classes from tomorrow as part of our three-week "pause" anyway. 

The one thing the pandemic has given me is bonus time with my first-born. And also, somehow--the time and desire to disappear into a long, hot bath.

Auspice

They tell me time is a thief 

I plant surviving memories

for there is no cure for life

as there are no answers.

There is history to my grief

geography too--I wear what 

was done to me--uncertainty, 

a sadness, the calls to flood. 

Someone--carry my disbelief, 

it is heavy as a civilization.

I read skies to déjà vu myself 

greying--sometimes--silvered.

Ill

I don't know what's left to say:

here's pain; here's my armor

still songs beat in my heart

return me to myself, kids.

I have become a ghost; I go;

I was gone for a generation

until tears filled my prayers

swam into years of sky.

Return me to myself, kids,

I belong to a god who has 

never even once killed me

the press of axe is only ice. 

When surrender lies inside me 

I... will shatter--into your accents

your stories, curious superstitions.

For you, I will... love unfinished. 

A Sweet Diwali

Happy Diwali! Sweetness and light from our home to yours!

***

I usually buy sweets at the Indian store for Diwali (or some years it has been a bar of chocolate or an assortment of fruit), but this year I watched a few Pinterest videos and made my own versions of coconut ladoo and besan ladoo. 2020 just seemed to call out for some extra effort. 

We're a difficult family to make sweets for--At is sweet averse and allergic to all nutty things; Nu can eat some nuts; Scout and Huck can't eat raisins and sultanas; and Big A won't eat anything too sweet.  

I added pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, and dried cranberries to the coconut ladoo and almonds and pistachios to the besan ladoo (and given that besan is chickpea flour, that one must be pretty high in protein!). In this Diwali iteration, At could theoretically eat the coconut ones, Nu will eat both, and I can safely share bites with Scout and Huck without hurting them (as I subbed out the raisins). Big A may still not like/eat them.

We've packed boxes for LB, TB, BS, and EM, and sent proud pictures to every family chat.

The stuff of horror

Tomorrow is Diwali and I want to get this down in the hope that I will be able to set it aside for a little bit. I've been carrying it around since yesterday when I read a thread on Mona Eltahawy's Twitter (since then, I've seen a few news outlets calling it the "Kashmore Tragedy"). The details are so horrific I can't say them out loud without choking and I don't really think I could pass it on to anyone else.  

But the story keeps going around in a loop in my head, knotting now and then around the old nodes: the precarity of being a single mother; how difficult it is to love and grow a girl child in this fucking patriarchal world; the horror of captivity and unending rape; lives where people move across the country for a job that pays about 250 dollars; knowing people are out there victim-blaming--saying things like 'bad choices' and 'where is the father?'; what care and support are available to the mother and child; why support wasn't available to them previously; the courage it took for the mother to go to the police instead of prolonging the cycle; if the police treated her with respect; the bravery and compassion of the ASI (assistant sub inspector?) using his wife and daughter as decoys to catch the rapists; were the ASI's wife and daughter given a choice in the matter; worried for the ASI and his family now that his name and likeness are all over media; knowing there's so much more abuse I'll never even know from within safe spaces in families, communities, and professional + emergency services. Why are so many men/humans such trash? 

On the Enby parenting group, one parent recently asked what our own lives might have looked like if we had the freedom of gender choice we support for our children. I know I've always wished for genderlessness, especially in professional settings. And in so many other settings, I'd have loved the possibility of having what Wanda Sykes calls a "detachable pussy."

"Stare at each other like TV"

Probably one of my favorite lyrics right now, and not constantly in a romantic way. Sometimes it's the little ones I want to stare at... also trees.

In other news, Covid cases have been spiking on campus, so I'm moving everything online especially as students are being encouraged to go home. It's so disheartening after so many have been so vigilant and careful. And my classes were going to share research presentations next week too. Anyway.

Like most people, I feel I've normalized some stuff like going to the store, getting massages, etc. because it felt nicer not having to worry for a ninth month. But we ought to be worried. 

This story about a smallish wedding reception (55 guests) leading to "three separate Covid-19 outbreaks that infected 178 people, putting three into the hospital and killing seven more" where "none of those who got seriously ill or died even went to the wedding, and many lived 100 miles away" is a sad and awful unsnooze call for me. I don't know that I could live with being the cause of someone's decline+/-death in this way.