the aspiring sports PT

my blonde hair sat across your dark skin tonight. 

while i ate a potato with my fork,

you stuffed your naan into your mouth

and burped because "it is polite." 

 

you told me about the funeral i couldn't attend

two continents away, where they performed rituals

whose names i only remember from "a little princess"

when sara tells stories of blue gods; the ones i denounced, 

choosing instead to associate myself with mother's 

white confirmation dresses and the nicene creed.

 

you spoke in comfortable syllables, 

like when you ask men with broken ears 

to tilt their heads to microscopes

so you can make them hear again.

 

everything was gray when you showed me

mataji with a big bowl of roses to turn to water

that she'd later sprinkle on his bed--

at least where it used to be. 

 

and then between bites you broke with teeth

that never saw your lips meet,

you described how you called his name out

to urge his soul to the car to haridwar.

even then you did not cry.

 

i pictured the ganges as you painted

a picture of temples high on a cliff

and golden idols like ones my mother's bible

tells me to reject.

at the base of the river, you say, 

where erosion patterns mimic rings of smoke,

from the pundit's fire and chants of 

o nath narayan vasudeva,

uncle took the ashes as duty dictates

the eldest son to say goodby.

 

these facts-- 

like memorizing the castes in eighth grade--

is how i know your past: 

your stories of picking papaya

from trees outside a bathroom stall, 

and papaji on a bike. 

but i paint my own pictures too, 

and see him pedaling with legs too frail, 

delivering newspapers under a sun

that made my mother faint.

 

i want to ask you who you were when you were seventeen.

did you wear a mustache for the girls,

or was it really because there was no time to shave

when you spent time studying names of ear canals

in a language not your own?

i want to ask how it makes you feel

to know your only picture that remains

is you in a dress and jewelry and black kohl

in a room i have never seen.

 

i tried to picture death, or what comes next,

the way you told it then--

in a bowl by a river older than the church

where my mother's father laid

before they buried him beneath the ground

and whispered those words about ashes and dust; 

because you said instead of ashes

they burned your papa down to bone.

 

i know you'd cried before: i saw it

when we visited one of those facts--

that house with dust steps that cracked

beneath your birkenstocks;

and that time when you and mother

got into a fight about your youngest brother

and i finally understood that the distance

stretched farther than the atlantic.

 

but you didn't cry even when he didn't remember your name,

or where you were coming from or where you were going,

or why you weren't going to stay.

you told me the last time he saw you though, he remembered

america

and one simple, "why are you going there"

you answered with my name. 

 

you told me this between salt that ran

down cheeks that look like his

and all i could think about was how now

i was eating with my hands.