Ice
You are a crucible of ice
Unfeeling receptacle of life’s
elixir as I pour on in vain.
May fire char your rigor mortis,
wind disperse its ashes,
icy water trickle back to earth.
When your elements
return to balance,
your heart may beat again.
Storm
I wish upon you many things
most from a love cast away
like a warm but threadbare sweater
after winter’s bite was gone.
I wish that you pray for peace
to be upon me and mine each
night before you fall asleep.
That you dream of making love
to me wondering who does instead.
That you seek my laughter
among other voices in life's passing by.
That you try to catch a glimpse
of legs sculpted in stone as women
mill in and out of the subway.
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
I like wind storms but not ice storms. Seasonal ice changes bring lot of changes. Hope we will not see any ice storms anymore.
SriPriya