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Permanent Residency

 

My mother sings a voicemail

into the air --

her song reaches me hours later,

her hard-boiled Urdu becoming pliant 

in the low register of her voice. 

By now, the sun in its perennial journey,

has dwindled from her sight

and appeared outside my window, 

the tulips on the sill greet its powdery warmth --

her sky and mine, so different from each other.

 

They tell me the tomb in my old neighborhood

of a little-known saint was razed --

townhomes stand there now.

I don’t learn the fate of ardent prayers 

in many textures -- yarn, pieces of cloth, twine --

tied to a weary flagstaff at the threshold.

Years ago, like nascent hope, those strings fluttered

in the fragrant breeze of early evening,

swayed in the shadow of a lemon tree --

gone, too.

 

My father doesn’t dwell on nostalgia --

instead, he says something about cholesterol 

and hypertension, 

about the body diminishing with age,

we talk as though there is no ocean parting us, 

and yet the distance invokes itself in innocent ways --

he sits at his breakfast table

while I prepare his granddaughter for bed,

we exist in different days of the week

for twelve hours each day.

 

They tell me Amma Daani has died --

the old woman who went from house to house,

massaging almond oil into the scalp of children,

kneading their limbs, tut-tutting over how little they ate, 

and then cutting fat wedges of mangoes for each child.

She died peacefully, they tell me,

her sons were with her, 

she was not alone,

but no child she had cared for

could make it to the funeral.

 

*Published in Sant Clara Review: Spring