Response to the poem After Love

Response to the poem After Love

1 

I learned love when you held my hand,

in back alleys of Delhi, two-long haired girls in ponytails

one swinging to the beat of radio, one swinging in the rain

of impossibilities. 

2 

When it showered in June my bedsheets damp 

with cold leapt awake every night in thunder. 

The walls sore with having to split open

and seam itself back after he took out all hinges

leaving all doors broken. 

3 

The tea sips itself in the cold, 

after the cold begins to turn hands into glass

Today after my mother picked up the glasses from the 

floor, I bent down to blow apologies that never came, into them

She held my hand while the cupboard shook 

with suitcases falling to the ground. 

4 

I met a girl whose skin

burned with love every time I held her

I wondered how it didn't burn her

when I was soaking wet in gasoline

Maybe I still had to learn how to origami 

 wings of a phoenix from the tails of my spine.

5 

His father hung him like a bird, 

in memory drawn from flesh, on sunday

evenings he was a wooden puppet

swinging from the porch,

I can 

still 

hear his 

call. 

6 

   Marine Drive calls my name

   with tongues of silk wrapped up 

    in verses of lozenges only when 

    I’m in Delhi. The ocean asks my 

     Yamuna if it’s 

     too late for tide? 

7 

   I let the curtains fan the bed, the window

   decides it doesn’t want to look at 

   my face or of the world, it paints 

   itself white sinking into a slumber 

   of no eyes. 

8 

    The world is full of

    graveyards, countries folding my love affairs

    with cities I thought would welcome me. 

    I wake up from graves every week,

    you can't stop me 

     from wanting all the afters. 

9 

     The money plants in my room 

      have started to reach the walls, 

      This year I learnt how to soak 

      up the light again.

      I wonder   

                     now if it’s this easy to

                         hold my palm up

                         against the roof?

    Now that my heart has walked back

    to my body after twenty years of living.

                        

10  

      You spent summers in museums, 

      picking up postcards for me, 

      I left them to burn the month after

      I found your bones forcing themselves inside 

       of me. I grow again from tree trunks

        and sew my marbled skin from scratch.

                       There are many ways 

                                 to be a woman.