PEACOCKS

Lately? Lately I’ve been living with spiders.

But as roommates go, they haven’t been too bad.

The one in the bathroom keeps to his side of the tile,

and the one in the bedroom can get a little bit grabby,

but for the most part he keeps his hands to himself.

I guess all those car engines and hairsprays finally caught up to us

because the sky here is so polluted, it glows orange

from 5PM, through night, ‘til morning.

Some people think it’s disgusting

that you can shower off what you thought was a tan.

But me? I can’t help but fall in love with a city

that has fifteen hours of twilight.

Outside the city, the dark is so dark,

it is easy to forget which day is Tuesday.

But the night there was a dry lightning storm,

it was like strobe lights through the window.

I snuck outside and stood with my face up, smiling:

I thought God was taking photographs.

And even though I felt silly standing there in my underwear,

I figured I needn’t be embarrassed: he’s seen me in a whole lot less.

Some nights, I wake up with a black hole in my chest.

It echoes like a beatboxing hurricane

and burns like a grandmother’s memory.

I tried Pepcid AC. It didn’t help.

I gave a haircut with big sloppy scissors

and even made it look sort of nice.

Everybody knew it was just a courtesy cut anyway;

it probably wouldn’t do anything for the lice or the bedbugs.

I’ve been looking for my favorite constellations everywhere,

but I haven’t found any sign of them yet.

The distances between stars are all different here. Much wider.

I have always relied on the English of others and in this

Rickshaw Named Desire, it’s no exception.

On a cement rooftop somewhere off the highway,

it is creeping its way towards night, when nineteen-year-old Ravi

begs me to write a love letter for him.

It is for Neha, the girl he is in love with.

She speaks English. He does not.

So he cannot explain to me that this is forbidden.

That he is already set to marry—whomever his parents choose.

But certainly someone within the village,

and certainly someone within the caste,

and certainly not this someone, wrapped in yellow silk,

who smiles up at me from the photograph he shows me.

I write it for him anyway.

It has something about the moon, some stars in the sky,

the way her eyes sparkle and how he wishes they could be together always.

When I finish writing, Ravi takes the letter from my hands

and reads it carefully out loud. He does not understand a single word,

but reads diligently and slowly, looking up at me every so often

to see if he is pronouncing the words correctly.

When I hear what I have written out loud,

the clichés hang in the air between us like bad breath.

I wish that I could take it back and write it over.

I would write:

Dear Neha,

Be careful about rooftops. Not about how high they are, but about how quickly your heart beats the faster you climb. Ravi’s hands are good for climbing. I like the way he stands behind his mother when she is working: not so much to insist on helping her, but just to let her feel his presence, in case she needs him to reach for something on a top shelf. I like that he believes in love letters. His pants are a few inches too short. Have you come to visit him here? Probably not. The peacocks are enormous. They sound like cats. No one seems to pay them very much mind, but the males dance across all the rooftops of the village, begging for someone to notice their tails.

Good luck with your secret,
Sarah

Ravi gets to the end of his letter, and reads the words, I love you.

These are words he understands. He smiles an enormous smile and

bows his head. On my way back to the car, the translator tells me

Ravi wishes to say thank you. I tell him to tell Ravi good luck,

and he does so. Ravi puts both hands inside the car window

onto my own and says, Dhanyavad—over and over,

thanking me for the love letter—bahut bahut dhanyavad.

He will never marry her, the translator tells me,

after we have been driving in the dark for a few minutes.

Yes, I say, but he can love her.

It is monsoon season.

I watch as tall street corners become river banks and

potholes become death traps; not even the rickshaws are safe.

The cobra that I met in the orchard behind the lantern shed

was much smaller than I’d imagined,

but the mangoes were just as sweet.

That’s probably why when we cut one open,

a spider crawled its way out. It had made its home inside.

ON BEING PREPARED

I. Now.

Sometimes, when I am by myself,

I imagine my own murder.

The open window,

the three steps necessary to cross the room.

Blunt object to the skull,

red ribbon and the feel of the carpet against my cheek.

I fix my hair in the mirror,

change the song to one with cello.

When they find me,

someone will check the time of death.

Someone will do the math, count backwards

through the music.

Press the buttons, back, back, back.

They will figure out which song was playing

when it happened.

Even when nobody is home,

I am careful what I listen to.

II. Then.

I used to practice

what I would look like

when someone was falling in love with me.

I tilted my head, looked into the distance.

I don’t even notice you falling in love with me, I practiced to the mirror.

I am too preoccupied with what I am doing.

Nobody wants to be noticed when they are falling in love.

It is a private moment.

Whoever was falling in love with me, I reasoned,

deserved not to be disturbed.

III. Sometime.

I am working in my pajamas.

There is a knock at the door.

Teeth unbrushed, hair unwashed.

I leave everything to answer.

You kiss me and take off your coat.

Don’t have long to spare, you say.

Just came by to say hello.

In the other room, my music skips.

The carpet squishes between my toes.

I wasn’t expecting you.

ON THE DISCOMFORT OF BEING IN THE SAME ROOM AS THE BOY YOU LIKE

Everyone is looking at you looking at him.

Everyone can tell. He can tell. So you

spend most of your time not looking at him.

The wallpaper, the floor, there are cracks

in the ceiling. Someone has left a can of

iced tea in the corner, it is half-empty,

I mean half-full. There are four light bulbs

in the standing lamp, there is a fan. You

are counting things to keep from looking

at him. Five chairs, two laptops, someone’s

umbrella, a hat. People are talking so you

look at their faces. This is a good trick. They

will think you are listening to them and not

thinking about him. Now he is talking. So

you look away. The cracks in the ceiling are

in the shape of a whale or maybe an elephant

with a fat trunk. If he ever falls in love with

you, you will lie on your backs in a field

somewhere and look up at the sky and he will

say, Baby, look at that silly cloud, it is a whale!

and you will say, Baby, that is an elephant

with a fat trunk, and you will argue for a bit,

but he will love you anyway.

He is asking a question now and no one has

answered it yet. So you lower your eyes from

the plaster and say, The twenty-first, I think,

and he smiles and says, Oh, cool, and you

smile back, and you cannot stop your smiling,

oh, you cannot stop your smile.

HERE AND NOW

Here and now, I have only these hands,

this mouth, this skin as wide as a shoreline,

this beehive between my ears, this buzz, this buzz.

You are the best thing I never planned.

This is the widest I can stretch my arms without

dropping things. This is the first time I don’t care

if I drop things. This is what dropping

things feels like. This is what happens when

the flowers wake up one morning and decide to

smell human: it confuses us, makes us

reach backwards into places that are sharp,

feel around for things we’ve dropped. I have

forgotten what I was looking for. It doesn’t

seem important. You brought me flowers.

You made the bed. This is the widest I can

stretch my arms. This is all I have right now.

OPEN

Sometimes, when we kiss, I keep my eyes open. I know it’s impolite. It started when I was in high school, the first boy—the one who tasted like peach vitamin water and sweat—he kissed me as though I was made of tears and he had never seen the sea before. I was scared he would look at me, scared that if he opened his eyes, I would turn into a pillar of salt, so I peeked to make sure he didn’t. First one eye and then the other, our mouths a tightrope, my eyes a set of cheeky clowns trying not to fall. I had never seen another person so up-close before. Things happen to God’s perfect aesthetic. Noses are mountain slopes, cheeks are fields, lips gape and pull, morph and stretch, we are no longer faces, we are landscapes. I was not kissing a boy, I was kissing America. And America tasted like peach vitamin water and sweat.

Now it is a habit. Now, it is less about fear and more about curiosity. Today I opened my eyes, and this man—the one who makes the bed when I leave—his eyes were open too. I was embarrassed, and I was furious! Nobody opens their eyes when they kiss! How dare he look at me when I did not know! But when I pulled away from him, he was smiling; he had not blinked. He does not kiss me like an ocean. His eyes do not turn me to salt. This is new terrain.

A PLACE TO PUT OUR HANDS

My wheels are finally

slowing down.

You are trying to find

a place to put your hands.

I am trying to find

a way back to India.

Maybe we are both looking

for the same soil:

it is red, smells like clay,

the way it must have smelled

when God put it there.

I am not scared

the way I was once.

I have bled through

the train to Agra,

fought the cockroaches

with my bare hands.

I have seen the Taj Mahal

at sunrise, I remember

what love and pain can build.

You are looking

for mountains to climb.

I am looking

for the words to a poem

I can’t remember.

TODAY’S POEM

Sometimes the writing

should be put on hold: a boy

who smells like springtime.