Delineation

I’m an Indian Mother, I just saw you.
I wish I could wring my back like that,
pick up my Dimples of Venus' muscles and lie
upside down on the mat surefooted, stretch
to conquer the memories of the past life, life passed
like ashes of butterfly wings incinerated
in a forest fire. But I’ve submissions to make.

Your face has surrendered to calm or
even if a makeshift one, you remind me
of my children when they were babies, they would
make Vs of their bodies and sleep like that.

The three circles of what appears to be a shawl
have managed to keep me seeing you for long.
The top one among them seems to be laughing at me.
My hands too are curtained behind the reigns,
but of abstinence, order, patriarchy, and choices made
for me, like I was the origami’s twisting flying flower,
flown at will by the twist of others, parched by
washing clothes, utensils, cooking food, scorched
by drunken beatings, submitted to signs of the fire

Delineation

the dark circles under my eyes. Oh I envy you!
Like the flower in your hair, I’m downright up,
inside the air that seems so easy to breathe in,
but like Jonathan Seagull, wants to go crazy,
like your legs and your feet.

Does your neck hurt? Mine does. Teach me,
O lady, how to surrender the pain, that my throat
keeps choked in circles and lumps difficult to gulp,
for my mouth still clearly looks delineated despite
the tension at the corner of the wrinkles and lips,
like yours.