I try to fall asleep with a full belly trying to imagine what it must be like to live across the street from a leafy tree-lined feast, just a slip of luck away from fasting.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
DUST
Dust is a hundred-thousand microscopic moments from selves you've long shed that've found new homes in the disused shelves of your furniture. A piece of me from when we first kissed collects behind your TV with a piece of you from the day your mom called and said Uncle Hector is in the hospital. They sit in silent vigil until the day we move in together.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
I don't understand
I.
On the flight I sit next to two young, attractive, very made-up girls who drink a lot of wine. Across the aisle are three dark young men who seem to be headed somewhere for a job — perhaps to join the young Malay and Filipino men and women manning the overpriced stores in the Muscat airport. They fidget until they are stunned into stillness by their whiskeys, becoming slack, helpless zombies in their seats. The light-skinned, fair-haired flight attendant is visibly irritated by them — I don’t speak Hindi, she spits, lips painted pink, smudged, exasperation palpable in her pale face.
II.
At immigration there is a sudden high pitch — the officer manning the line to my right yells at a woman standing at her booth. The officer’s eyes flash. She’s very pretty, in a delicate way that makes me think of an indie music festival in a meadow. She looks incensed. I can’t see the face of the woman she is yelling at, but she’s wearing a peach coloured headscarf, and there’s another woman next to her at the counter and I assume they are together.
I move up in my line. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch an sheet of paper being waved. A-4, like my own e-visa. The waver is the women in peach. The pretty officer once again reprimands her — now I think she must be interrupting someone else's procedure. We are in the foreign passport holders line, and only after this second scolding do I wonder if the woman even understands the language in which she's being scolded.
As I walk up to my counter, the air thickens further. The pretty officer yells again — the woman in peach seems to be trying to go through and is told, through fierce flailing gestures, to step back. The officer checking me, another young woman — also attractive, though more punkish and dishevelled — chimes in: she yells and slaps the counter in front of her, a shiny plastic surface.
The woman in peach moves over to my line, and my officer, after asking for my visa, looks not at it or my passport but fixes a stern gaze on the woman. At this point I look back and see that the woman is smiling, her skin peachy too. She is told to step aside and wait; I go through. I wait a minute to see what will happen to her, but I don’t understand anything.
On the flight I sit next to two young, attractive, very made-up girls who drink a lot of wine. Across the aisle are three dark young men who seem to be headed somewhere for a job — perhaps to join the young Malay and Filipino men and women manning the overpriced stores in the Muscat airport. They fidget until they are stunned into stillness by their whiskeys, becoming slack, helpless zombies in their seats. The light-skinned, fair-haired flight attendant is visibly irritated by them — I don’t speak Hindi, she spits, lips painted pink, smudged, exasperation palpable in her pale face.
II.
At immigration there is a sudden high pitch — the officer manning the line to my right yells at a woman standing at her booth. The officer’s eyes flash. She’s very pretty, in a delicate way that makes me think of an indie music festival in a meadow. She looks incensed. I can’t see the face of the woman she is yelling at, but she’s wearing a peach coloured headscarf, and there’s another woman next to her at the counter and I assume they are together.
I move up in my line. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch an sheet of paper being waved. A-4, like my own e-visa. The waver is the women in peach. The pretty officer once again reprimands her — now I think she must be interrupting someone else's procedure. We are in the foreign passport holders line, and only after this second scolding do I wonder if the woman even understands the language in which she's being scolded.
As I walk up to my counter, the air thickens further. The pretty officer yells again — the woman in peach seems to be trying to go through and is told, through fierce flailing gestures, to step back. The officer checking me, another young woman — also attractive, though more punkish and dishevelled — chimes in: she yells and slaps the counter in front of her, a shiny plastic surface.
The woman in peach moves over to my line, and my officer, after asking for my visa, looks not at it or my passport but fixes a stern gaze on the woman. At this point I look back and see that the woman is smiling, her skin peachy too. She is told to step aside and wait; I go through. I wait a minute to see what will happen to her, but I don’t understand anything.
Monday, February 18, 2019
URGENCY
I.
Urgency affects its immediate surroundings in much the same way a fire does. It catches and spreads, and your only best shot at safety is to remove yourself from the situation entirely—to watch your life burn before your eyes, and believe that your distance will spare you the same fate.
II.
She moved to San Francisco. Or was it Istanbul? Today, an hour's drive and a day's flight feel equally prohibitive. We don't talk so much. I wonder, from time to time, how life is over there.
III.
Two giant maples grow in the front yard of my mom's house. The old lady across the street, before she died, said she remembered them being planted when she was a young girl. The roots of the one closest to the house is stressing the old home's foundation, so they'll have to remove it. So many falls raking those leaves.
Urgency affects its immediate surroundings in much the same way a fire does. It catches and spreads, and your only best shot at safety is to remove yourself from the situation entirely—to watch your life burn before your eyes, and believe that your distance will spare you the same fate.
II.
She moved to San Francisco. Or was it Istanbul? Today, an hour's drive and a day's flight feel equally prohibitive. We don't talk so much. I wonder, from time to time, how life is over there.
III.
Two giant maples grow in the front yard of my mom's house. The old lady across the street, before she died, said she remembered them being planted when she was a young girl. The roots of the one closest to the house is stressing the old home's foundation, so they'll have to remove it. So many falls raking those leaves.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Friday, September 14, 2018
EN DOBLE
I saw you with both my eyes open, and saw doble. I closed one eye the rest of our conversation, but only grasped half the story. The rest of my mind draped itself around the crests and crashes of your words, the syllables pulsing from your mouth like eruptions from a burning world. You chuckled into your hand and your shoulders fell like flowing lava. Let me burn reaching around the curve of your collar bone. Our eyes caught in a pause and our mouths grew limp, betraying neither pleasure nor anxiety. I opened my eye and there were two mouths quickly licking your lips with just the tip of the tongue. Blinking, focusing, I thought out my next sentences just as the server asked if we needed another round.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Viva la vida, como dijo Frida
Observo a mis labios en el rearview de mi coche por la noche, mirando la corrida de las luces de la carretera sobre ellos, y pienso en qué guapo son, qué guapo se ven gritando cosas en la privacidad de mi caja metal, gritando cosas en mi idioma adoptado, gritando Órale! gritando Pendejo! Te parece gracioso, pero no es nada grave, me estoy hibridizando nada más. Sí que hablo español y sí que vivo en Nueva Delhi, y sí que escribo, y presto atención a lo que me da la gana, y estoy contenta, coño! En las pausas ahora, incluso cuando hable inglés, digo ehhhh y no uhhhh, y eso me dice que ya me penetró algo del otro mundo, ya se me injertó algo distante, ya estoy viviendo una doble triple multiple vida, y que guapos mis labios riéndose de alegría.