Rambles
back to nature
i wonder when we’ll go back
to nature
will it be before that glorious day
when the sun rises high in the sky
beaming down as we bask in the glory of the day of reckoning
when the tūī chirp their final notes
and the last mighty kauri falls
when people cease
and the last lovers embrace
will it be on that day
when nature has her reprisal
that we wish we’d noticed the knowing wink of stars,
and earth’s face
awash with tears
that filled the oceans
as they rose with fury
will it be then that we go back to nature?
half and half
sometimes
a story opens up inside;
a knife splicing
my belly in half.
not cautious.
not careful.
bloody guts,
and suppressed emotions
come gushing out.
the indigenous experience,
and internalised colonialism,
wage a war within.
i struggle to know
which side to give
my strength to.
for it is safer
to dissolve
the melanin
within my skin,
but it is braver yet
to yell
to scream
to put up a fight
and above all else,
to love,
and if that
scares people
then so be it.
home
grainy gritty greedy
starved for so long
you made me hate my own skin and bones.
the blood rushes and fingers grow numb.
ragged breaths and monstrous tears.
my heart beats louder and louder.
a little man sits inside my head knocking on the walls begging to be let in.
bleeding knuckles begging to be kissed better, and still he knocks.
it aches and breaks, a cracking smile he grins away,
as thoughts swirl around up there.
not good enough, not strong enough, not thin enough - you aren’t enough.
tick tock you let him in,
tick tock now he won’t leave.
men bleed and women cry,
but none of this will stop your plight.
silly girl please stop crying.
grainy gritty greedy.
soft and warm,
this feels like home.
beauty itself
sometimes it takes someone else
loving your body for you to truly see it.
the slope of my neck as it collapses into my shoulder,
the hands that heal with just a touch,
the valleys and mountains of speckled brown skin,
the tightly curled black ribbons that bloom from my body are
beauty itself
my softness and hardness
blessings
my body
an invaluable companion.
i remember the day my stretch marks arrived
staring at myself alone in the mirror i cried at the distortion of my perfect flesh
i cried at the thought of lovers disgusted
unwelcome
traitorous
my body
broken
unsatisfactory
i had never hated my body before
and it wouldn’t stop there...
whore
mutt
names i’d rather not hear again
loved ones don’t treat you like that
“remember girls -
red lipstick is becoming of a slut”
sometimes it takes someone showing you your worth for you to realise it
oh there is so much to explore
to love more and more
there are discoveries to be made
with myself along the way
my body is mine
to touch, to please
to hold, to grieve
it bends and it stretches
it gives and it breaks
and there is so much to explore
to love more and more
what i remember about my mother
i remember the dried splotch of blood on the car window as we drove home.
i remember
fragments,
snatches,
pieces -
i lifted my hand to touch the blood. someone had missed a spot when wiping away all remnants of my mother. i recoiled in disgust.
i remember walking out onto the patio where her body met concrete, standing there awhile, breathing in the smell of disinfectant. i closed my puffy red eyes and imagined it all.
i felt the whoosh of air as she fell from the roof, the sound of bones cracking against the ground echoing through the soles of my feet. i heard her scream, and my sister's as well. they are echoes that come and go. voices telling me things. being held and then pushed away. I stood there alone as dusk fell.
i read once that someone who loses a parent in childhood realises their grief as they age. perhaps this is why her death still haunts me. in the moments i ache for her beside me, to hear her laugh once more, see the love etched across her face in wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes that twinkled with joy.
as i re-open these wounds, more memories return to me.
last words are a grace everyone wishes upon their future. my sister told me the last thing she heard my mother say was her meal suggestion for lunch, baingan bharta (fried aubergine). not exactly representative of a person’s life, or maybe it is. i don’t know. i’d want my last words to be something cool or profound.
maybe i’ll follow in my mother’s footsteps and call out my breakfast of choice... pancakes for the record.
i don’t want these memories,
they snarl and keep me up on nights when sleep evades me.
if i’m not careful they even bite.
I force my face beneath the covers,
hidden from view,
where soft tears and gentle sobs help fight the demons all alone in the dark.
they remain, pushed deep within for the night,
bittersweet with an acrid taste lingering in my mouth long after i’m asleep.
*
the seventh of september 2012.
the day she died.
i wet myself for the very first time.
i came home, lay down on the couch and fell asleep.
i remember
fragments,
snatches,
pieces -
waking up to warm wetness.
the utter embarrassment of it.
for months after, i would wet the bed.
i would rush my bed sheets to the bathroom and soak them in buckets before school,
hiding them from the housekeeper, hired to take care of my mother’s kids.
in some ways, she filled the gap my mother left behind.
in other ways, not so much -
I can still feel her long nails pinching at my skin, when she found the piss soaked sheets: "what would your mother say, eh?"
the rage i felt then still bubbles up now and then.
i knew my mother would have understood the ways in which grief arrives.
unidentifiable sometimes and it takes you by surprise.
you must bend to it.
the rage i felt then still bubbles up every now and then.
at the fake family friends, who’d laugh and sneer at my brown dad behind his back,
and then stopped making time for him and his three broken kids.
at the parasitic snobs who used my mother to raise their own social status,
as though her whiteness would rub off on them if they hung around her enough.
i can't blame them if I'm honest.
india is a rough place,
a colonised place,
a broken place,
where whiteness is cherished and loathed.
she was a white foreigner, lost in a sea of brown faces consuming
vials and bottles of various bleaches and toners,
empty promises which equated fair skin to superiority;
my mother was lost, and they used her.
i wonder sometimes whether they themselves believed the lies they spun,
first to her and then to me.
"your mama's in a better place now. she's with the angels."
"we haven't told your grandma yet."
"we got you some fresh clothes."
"would I lie to you rimu?"
that last one felt sharp around the edges.
my father was fucked off and
didn't even look us in the eye when he told us.
i guess it was easier for him that way - not to look his children in the eye and tell them he couldn't save their mother. it would have broken him. i think it still did.
*
mourning the loss of moments in time,
places i can never return to.
missing her feels like
the air knocked from my lungs, winded.
constantly grazed knees
that won’t scab -
time heals all wounds,
but what if i don’t want to?
the pain makes me real
it’s all i’ve ever known
it’s careless and reckless
to say i’ve had a difficult childhood
some have it so much worse
my mother loved me
and my father, oh he breaks me
my pain isn’t their pain
reminders time and time again
i won’t love you the way
you want me to
because this is all i’ve ever known.
*
she promised me a birthday i’d never forget -
except now that’s all i remember.
promises made in good intention,
she fell before she could see them to fruition.
never watched me shave my legs
or fall in love
or hold my hair back
as i throw up.
i grew up
she won’t grow old
manic woman
forever cold.
a hurricane
my father called her
after she died.
i saw my father weep that day,
(in the seat he sat in
every night after)
cigarette in hand,
sobbing his heart out,
“how can i believe there’s a god
if he took her from me”
his wails are immortalised in my fragmented memories.
immortalised in my
fragmented memories
what was real? and what have i embellished?
wasn’t she just
the best woman ever,
or do i just say that because
i don’t know any better?
i remember the sacred oil they poured in her mouth.
as she lay stretched out piled up with logs,
i thought to myself how unlike herself she looked.
It felt wrong, as though a foreign film was playing, but there were no subtitles.
somehow i’ve always thought she wouldn’t have wanted
a funeral pyre.
she was a woman of nature -
the earth, the trees, the birds,
oh my god how she’d watch the birds.
i don’t know what she’d have wanted
but i know it wouldn’t have been fire.
i go back to that moment -
i should’ve looked away,
i was insolent even then.
as i watched them yank open her mouth.
it felt crude, forced, disturbing.
my father had told us we could go to the funeral if we wanted to,
i should’ve stayed home,
but i was insolent even then.
they took her bones to punjab
and we spread her ashes in sattal -
these places are mine not yours
and i won’t share them with you,
for you see,
my mother was mine,
and i won’t share her with you.
