called you from your idle

dream-workshop with the subtle spanners,

half-speeches, after keeping

you up late as my youth last night, later

than the gods’ twilight, who witnessed your trials

at fixing kinks in my causal body, just before sleep.

(Though I guess now that gods do sleep, I don’t know where.)

I watched a star burn through your wall-length windows

—no sun of ours, we were long past

midnight—resplendent fire raging far more

distant, more dead. Pur ti miro, you showed me,

Pur ti stringo, pur ti godo. I felt closer than

ever to inspiration—each breath into passive lungs—

while your fingers pressed behind my neck.

Pur t’annodo: I enchain you, I tie you down.

You left me asleep on the couch, and I thought by

dawn I’d sneak in beside your soul. But

a blessed light came disrupting the blind-

fold and blinds, and instead I woke you with Wagner.

On the fringes of conversations
surging around me in a different language,
my tongue is frozen in English.
Silence funnels into my body
I reach for words I recognize—
‘kitap’ book, ‘café,’ brand names.

I nod and smile trying not to look demure,
use abhinaya, throw open the nine gates of emotion,
let wonder, worry, fear, ire, envy, disgust,
piety, surprise, and love cavort on my face,
my hands aiding me, a language refugee,
roaming bazaars and sun-weathered ruins.

“Thank you,” I say to the waiter, touching my heart
as he places aromatic coffee on the table.
Beyond the courtyard, the peach dome of a mosque.
I expect the muezzin to sing at noon,
remember Haji Ali dargah, a moon on the bay
on my bus rides home from college.

In Kolkata when I was 9, I’d played silently,
my ear tuned to my classmates chattering in Bengali,
drinking their words until they became mine.

^{Zion says, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a 
woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might 
forget, I never could forget you.—Isaiah 49:14–15} 

^{“What It’s Like to Lose Your Entire Memory.”—Cosmopolitan}

You don’t remember anything.
How I formed you in your mother’s womb;
nursed you; bathed you; taught you to talk;

led you to springs of water?
I sang your name before you were born.
I’m singing your name now.

You’re clueless as an infant.
When I tell you to shout for joy,
you hear a bicycle, or a cat.

Sometimes, memories of me come back
like children you forgot you had:
a garden; a bride; an image of  your mother,

a best friend, a brother, or a cop, or snow, or afternoon.
Whose are these? you wonder.
Then you forget, and feel forgotten,

like an infant who falls asleep
at the breast
and wakes up hungry again.

Your mother might forget you, child,
but I never forget.
Your name is engraved

on the palms of my hands.
I shower you with examples of my love—
bees and birds, librarians and life skills,

emotions, sunlight, compassion.
Nothing connects.
Every dawn, every generation,

I have to teach you again:
this is water; this is darkness;
this is a body

fitting your description;
that’s a crush;
this is an allergic reaction.

This is your anger.
This is mine.
This is me

reminding you to eat.
Turn off the stove.
Take your medication.

This is the realization
that I am yours and you are mine. This is you
forgetting.

At the end

of the story,

we exchanged

hair. Two tiny

Ziploc bags,

little plastic

windows.

I sheared off

the tip 

of my braid,

candlewick

twist-tight.

Please

use these

dead cells

to make

new words.

We never

baked

the blueberry

crumble:

let the

mashed bowl

of indigo

fruit

on the

counter

be your ink.

Dip me

whole

into the

sweet

blood &

try to

write

about

cutting

hair &

a scissor’s

song,

its sound

akin to

a memory

holding its

own

breath.

I wear

your black

cursive

on my chin,

& imagine

being the

teenaged boy

that you will

raise

with a lover

that looks

like me.

I wrap

you around

my wedding

finger, pull

& watch

you snap back

until you yawn.

I dress

you in the

foam of

apricot shampoo,

spin you in

my palm

to wash out

time.

At midnight,

you lay me

at the nape

of your neck,

guarding

your spine,

in the blue violet                                                                                                                 

of dream’s

intermissions.

We are

climbing

strands

to each other’s

roots,

searching

for homes

that we

have

already

passed.

Behind

your head

& in my hands,

we are closer

than secret.

my girlfriend drives us south. There’s a smear
of hot pink on the asphalt. From the passenger’s seat
I twist my head back. Did you see that? Only a flash,
until a few miles later. Again, then again, then a whole

velvet deer burst on the shoulder, and now everything is pink.
She stares ahead and holds my hand. She has asked
me not to notice these things, but I am a glutton
for how quickly the body becomes something different.

Before we met, I imagined a wedding like this. But— 
not this. She stood with the other bridesmaids in champagne.
I followed their husbands, snuck away for hot wings with them
between the ceremony and reception. It was so strange.

The bride was so beautiful. Her family, so kind. The chicken?
The most delicious I have ever eaten, and that made it all
worse, as I jostled with the husbands over the succulent drumsticks,
startled by the unexpected ease of flesh sundered from bone.

Now, there’s a light rain. She stares ahead. The grey, the pink,
her hand—will we always unknow each other in this way?
I want the whole carcass. I want to roam the caverns of her body,
loving her like an animal howling its own name.

It was summer when I found you 
In the meadow long ago, 
And the golden vetch was growing
By the shore.

Did we falter when love took us 
With a gust of great desire? 
Does the barely bid the wind wait
In his course?

The sun holds all the earth and all the sky 
From the gold throne of this midsummer day. 
In the soft air the shadow of a sigh
Breathes on the leaves and scarcely makes them sway. 
The wood lies silent in the shimmering heat, 
Save where the insects make a lazy drone, 
And ever and anon from some tree near, 
             A dove’s enamoured moan, 
Or distant rook’s faint cawing harsh and sweet, 
Comes dimly floating to my listening ear.

Right in the wood’s deep heart I lay me down, 
And look up at the sky between the leaves, 
Through delicate lace I see her deep blue gown. 
Across a fern a scarlet spider weaves 
From branch to branch a slender silver thread,
And hangs there shining in the white sunbeams, 
A ruby tremulous on a streak of light. 
            And high above my head 
One spray of honeysuckle sweats and dreams, 
With one wild honey-bee for acolyte.

My nest is all untrod and virginal, 
And virginal the path that led me here, 
For all along the grass grew straight and tall, 
And live things rustled in the thicket near:
And briar rose stretched out to sweet briar rose 
Wild slender arms, and barred the way to me 
With many a flowering arch, rose-pink or white,
            As bending carefully. 
Leaving unbroken all their blossoming bows, 
I passed along, a reverent neophyte.

The air is full of soft imaginings,
They float unseen beneath the hot sunbeams,
Like tired moths on heavy velvet wings.
They droop above my drowsy head like dreams.
The hum of bees, the murmuring of doves.
The soft faint whispering of unnumbered trees.
Mingle with unreal things, and low and deep
            From visionary groves, 
Imagined lutes make voiceless harmonies. 
And false flutes sigh before the gates of sleep.

O rare sweet hour! O cup of golden wine! 
The night of these my days is dull and dense, 
And stars are few, be this the anodyne!
Of many woes the perfect recompense.
I thought that I had lost for evermore
The sense of this ethereal drunkenness, 
This fierce desire to live, to breathe, to be;
            But even now, no less 
Than in the merry noon that danced before 
My tedious night, I taste its ecstasy.

Taste, and remember all the summer days 
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake 
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always; 
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take 
Into my hands again, but still discern 
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes. 
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
            Sweet with faint memories,

And mellow with old loves that used to burn 
Dead summer days ago, like fierce red kings.
And this hour too must die, even now the sun
Droops to the sea, and with untroubled feet
The quiet evening comes: the day is done.
The air that throbbed beneath the passionate heat
Grows calm and cool and virginal again.
The colour fades and sinks to sombre tones.
As when in youthful cheeks a blush grows dim.
            Hushed are the monotones 
Of doves and bees, and the long flowery lane 
Rustles beneath the wind in playful whim.

Gone are the passion and the pulse that beat 
With fevered strokes, and gone the unseen things 
That clothed the hour with shining raiment meet 
To deck enchantments and imaginings. 
No joy is here but only neutral peace 
And loveless languor and indifference, 
And faint remembrance of lost ecstasy.
            The darkening shades increase. 
My dreams go out like tapers—I must hence. 
Far off I hear Night calling to the sea.