I carry the face of my grandfathers,
dragged across a river and a border—
it remembers what their gods whispered
into their ribs. This household has
witnessed these almond-shaped earlobes
on countless faces, tucking ideologies
behind the refuge of prescribed spectacles,
and inherited smiles that perhaps left me
with some strength like the sour candies
scattered on my nightstand.

I have crossed a thousand kilometers now
where meals have become nothing more
than a cauldron of longing and my mouth
is indebted to the clatter of silverware in
unsolicited cathedrals. I remember in our
household, blessings were crowned with
sweetened curd on the threshold of the
jute doormat, you see, I’ve tasted love not
just in spring’s poppies or carefully peeled
seeds of a seasonal pomegranate, but also
in the tender caress of my mother’s palms.

/ Sometimes I wonder
if the lines etched on her forehead
mapped the contours of my fate,
more than her own.

My home is 7 lanes away from losing its ribs
on foreign vowels and the famine of literature
that is reduced to one saliva and one morsel
of ripe fruits jammed in zipped suitcases.
The mole in the inwards
now sits on an abandoned dining table,
and brews conversations in corners
too cramped to hold even a sliver.
Sometimes, I wonder
if these hands weren’t my inheritance,
they would be burned like plastic scraps
in furnaces doused in soot;
these ears would be shackled;
these thighs imprisoned; this mole
consumed in poorly buttered breakfasts
later spat out onto the faces of marigolds.

‘This inherent thirst burns my throat,
I feel as though I could wage a war
for just a glass of water
that can slit my mouth into ear-full smiles’

I was told the gods howling in the river
of my ancestor’s bones answered prayers
that are suckled in mustard-scented fires
callusing on the doorsteps. Yet, my ears
are crouching in this poem like a quivering
mutter that doesn’t know its own religion.
for I know grief is a hierarchy that fails to
recall even hints of my father’s voice now,
so I want to adorn the outer helix of my ears
with silver-lined piercings that’ll say:

‘I have crossed a thousand kilometers
                       from my household now,
but this face I carry of my ancestors
           is still the language of all my prayers.’

Poetry from The Hemlock Issue 7, Spring 2025

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