A little girl sits at the kitchen table,
Silently coloring while watching cable.
She asks, “Why does Daddy yell at you?”
Her mother says, “it’s just something he likes to do.”
She asks, “Did your Daddy yell at you?”
Her mother says, “Yes he did that too.”
She asks, “Will my future husband yell at me?”
Her mother says, “No, that should never be.”
Her mother hugs her tight and whispers,
“Well go far, far away, where theres only happiness,
And no more angry voices can ever reach us.”

In a few months, I would become a mother
myself. Drove to her home, eager to spend
the day with my own mother. Tried to ignore
the deepening crevices in her face, arthritic

knuckles that still pounded dough to make
dumplings for others. Late afternoon, we perched
upon her kitchen stools, sipped chrysanthemum tea.
Her voice was quiet as she recalled leaving her dear mother

decades ago, toddler on hip, for a new life overseas. An unspoken goodbye that shimmered like silk between them. Sorrow distorted her face, the words strangled in her throat: Lao Lao, your grandma, had shuffled from room to room, stunned into silence, the roar of this impending

distance already drowning out my pleas for her to somehow understand. I was leaving her, perhaps forever. Her fingers had trembled as she gifted me a parcel containing two homemade qipao dresses and three tiny outfits for you –
a toddler who would grow up without ever knowing her grandma.

I watched my mom as she sat in her kitchen, shoulders slumped.
I could see how this loss broke something in her.  Still, I made
no move to embrace her. Apathy bloomed in my folded arms
and shifty eyes, a feeble attempt to shield myself

from her palpable pain. Didn’t realize that I would be steeped in it
a mere few months later. Didn’t quite know then how to measure the distance between these wounded souls spinning out, unsure
of which direction was ‘home’ and unable to turn back.

In this tale of three mothers, I now see the steadfast thread
of Your handiwork stitching together burdened hearts
spanning seas, lands, the spaces between. It was Your grace
that carried us — and only with You, did we each learn surrender.

जन्म दिलास तूच मला,
आणि तूच मला वाढविलं,
सोनेरी दागिन्यासारखं एकदम
तूच मला घडविलं.

कधी चुकलो तर ओरडलीस मला,
कधी प्रेमाने जवळ घेतलंस,
कधी लागेल असं बोललीस मला,
कधी काळजीने पांघरूण घातलंस.

झेलल्यास माझ्या अडचणी
स्वतःवर तू सर्व,
आईसारखं नातं बनवणारा
थोडाच आहे तो निसर्ग.

कितीही काहीही झालं तरी
नाही देणार मी तुला अंतर,
आयुष्याच्या शेवटपर्यंत तुझ्यावर
प्रेम करीन मी निरंतर.

You told everyone you were a care bear
But you don’t know how to handle my heart

You don’t know what it means to care
Because otherwise my heart wouldn’t be ripped apart

You told everyone you would fight for me
and would go through fire like a bold beast

You only fight for money and power, can’t you see?
You toss me around like prey, celebrate it like a feast

oh you, you beautiful bear, you stuffed with jealousy bear
you use your claws on me, you show me you are the silverback

And you hurt me so deeply, I don’t think that is care
which is odd, because bears don’t like leaders of a pack

I tried to stuff myself back together with needles and thread
but my eyes are leaking and my mouth stays taped

you want me to sit still and look like every other zombie-head
Mary wrote a book about me, in which I was monster-shaped

I wish you held me, consoled me, supported me and not like a ripped bear
because that is what it actually means to care

My mother talks about you
a lot
almost worships you like
a god
Heard her talk about you
on calls
Always screams in my face
telling me to be a lot
like you
But listening to her
talk
I don't think I really like
you.

Gently indifferent, resolved, hardened in stasis
As rain on unallowing concrete
In earthbound unflow downward:
Gravity’s darkbow so torpid

Roaring past chronology:
the machinery of 10 minutes later, blurring
echo and desire, calling
time bygone time.
Lying.
Murmuring and rustling, grasped in closure, the absence of leaves
Subtly and steadily
The absence of mother.

In obeisance I cede to these greater forces and stoically belt myself
Insufficient enough and ready in faith
That ever comforting rope

An irrevocable condition, tethered
beyond windows cruel and secure,
communion estranged,
in a handful of sand,
scattered to some outside home
tenderly viewed

Yellow the visage glares oblique
A hazy, flat omen
Blinking, too, as it drives onward
Sentimentally no longer:
The sterile plane of a new day

Gentle, gentle waking world
Icarus me in sky not sea