Sleep comes late to my eyes
most nights if at all. Sometimes in
the quietness of the dark between
the sounds of my child’s breath
a voice asks me “Do you remember
the last time you were lovingly touched ?”
I choke back tears and say “Yes”
She asks me “When was that ?”
“Seven years ago and that was late”
“What about since ?” she asks again
“Never since” I say, the heart heaving
with pain. “Never since” I repeat.
The years pass me by. She says “Yes”
like she hears me. “Do you miss that
loving touch ?” she asks
“So much that I mistake it for life” I say
I want her to tell me I will
Live and be loved again. She fades
away like night melting to dawn.
I hear my child breathing and birdsong
These are signs of life I tell myself.
I hear her whisper one last time
“Pray to life for love to return”
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
Comments