a new life is cooked. We were taught to taste deeper than
most, so I know: burnt black beans taste like anger, lumpy rice tastes like another round
of layoffs, over-sweetened tea tastes like a daughter,
thinking of her mother, miles away, while holding her
new baby and promising her a future that she will hand over through the
fresh, cloudless blue of a nitrile glove.
ii. cardstock. tissue. newsprint. A page torn out of The Bombay Times. The dogeared
chapters of your Daddy’s new copy of Dickens, his
Hinglish, coughed out in asthmatic pen, staining the margins. You
fly. Wings stained by cashew paste shipped from the distant land you are taught to
call home. Tell your grandmother about origami, and ask if the cranes that
you fold live near her house because she too has a red spot on her forehead. She will
correct you and laugh, but your heart will sink a little. Wonder whether she can’t
understand because she is wingless, still perched in the distant land you call
home.
iii. dawn. noon. dusk. Your mother is the sun, rising.
You pray she is not yet set when she arrives
home in her scrubs each night. You leave your cranes
on the rickety desk, beneath the bills, near the coffee pot. She too is a bird. The early riser who
made it out. One day, when you visit the distant land you know as home, you will learn that
the slums still sing her name. Praise the one who got away. You will smile at her; face
now crinkled around the temples, a new yellowing around her eyes. And hold her hand;
still weightless, palm still hovering just above yours. You will grasp her tightly
because you know: that it takes everything she has for her not to unfold her wings
and lift off.
K. Mehta is a high school poet whose work has been published in The Cloudscent Journal, Apprentice Writer, and The New York Times. Her work has also been honored by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Smith College, Hollins University, and the National Council of English Teachers.