God, To the Common Woman

God, To the Common Woman

by | Nov 19, 2024 | Prose

my god is so tangible, so near. it rains and it sprouts as an egg. it can touch, and it can cry. it breathes and it interacts. yet his requires passage, prayer and letters. i cannot deny its beauty, and i love to watch him glow within it. he reverts to a little boy to me in such a moment – a boy given his potential so fully, that he may surpass it and seek the intangible god.

i have a little narrative i play inside my head. that i have a son who loves me very much. he asks me about god, why his father has a god yet his mother does not. i sit with him and tell him about god – his incarnations and the choice we all make to resonate most with whichever form we perceive him to be. that my god is the egg, or the rains and the world beside me, the earth beneath me. and his fathers’ is in the skies. my son thinks for a moment, and then tells me,

i was bestowed such praise so simply, so truthfully. and in that honour, i realise something else – god must be perfect. god cannot have a wavering moment, the ability to harm, he only loves. and i would love my son entirely, but i would hurt him too. i tell him i’m honoured, and i don’t say more. i wish to be his god as long as i can.

this narrative is mine. it is the voice in my head that wants the world to regard me as their god. to know that i could love them endlessly. i suppose that i am short of such praise, yet i desire it. and the little voice in my head tells me stories of it. she reminds me that all my love to give can be mine, and i don’t know how to take it. how do i take it when i want to share it? love is the only thing i do.

i seem doomed to love. as if it’s a woman’s destiny, her prophecy. because we were never given our whole potential first, we were handed it by the men, whose gods are in the skies.

Ears

by | Sep 3, 2024 | Poetry

when the common cold struck her, and she cursed the days she used both nostrils to breathe, it led her to think about all the holes on her face.

when one nostril closed, the other breathed.
when both closed, her mouth breathed.
and what if her mouth closed too?
she spared two more holes. her one ear, and the other.

she wondered why you couldn’t breathe through your ears.

an ode to the childish thoughts. the other day, as a natural victim to a blocked nose, i had this thought. i’m sure if i look it up there’s a perfectly appropriate justification. but i didn’t look it up. i sat with the silliness of such a thought, and i enjoyed the wonder of such simple curiosity. i will keep wondering why my ears don’t breathe.

Snow

by | Jul 25, 2024 | Poetry

the south Asian admiration for snow is its incarnations
such as a succession of dust that tumbles within a beam of light
or the drizzle of rain caught to hair that turns silver
when it falls in a flitter like a pale bug of the forest

A Hint of Jasmine

by | Jul 25, 2024 | Prose

she hovers over two men on a bike beside me. i watch her pull at their noses between the index and thumb of her fingers. i fidget as i await her arrival toward the open window of my cab.

instead, she walks over, cranes her neck just enough to wave and say, “hi madam”, before she walks away. she hadn’t even paused long enough to request my charity. and i never felt greater satisfaction to watch myself be saved of a discomfort that men had to induce instead.

patriarchy had made me cruel.

A Drunken Dance

by | Jul 25, 2024 | Poetry

she held me upright on the grass,
at our feet lay remains of white flowers, raat ki raani
we swayed, or danced and I told her she reminded me of the moon.