Festival days call me back to my roots,

the slow hinge of the door, my mother’s face bright with welcome.

The house breathes the aroma of childhood favourites,

a long-awaited arrival, briefly I forget what I shoulder.

I seek out old friends and the kin who remain,

exchanging gifts and wishes, briefly the world feels whole.

Then the rain of old questions descends —

their eyes wait for a cradle that never swings.

"You do so well at work—

a kingfisher, never a stone—

But what are you waiting for? Why do you hesitate?

You're straight, aren't you? Not that we'd mind —

You have a woman; marry her. What is the delay?

How is she content without a child?"—

the questions fall like stones.

Flash floods swallow the paddy before harvest.

The cyclone names itself after someone's daughter.

Why bring a child into this storm-torn banana plantation?

Mother, the sun arrives in March now, not May.

Father, you breathe the cough of the factory.

"Oh, child," they say,

"This is the hour of Kali, Bull of Dharma standing on just one leg,

Yet learn the dialect of dawn, not of despair.

Alone, we were birds in the storm,

until our egg broke to wings — you, against the gale.

You have a village now:

a chorus of hearts that refills your emptied well."

We name our rivers goddesses, then

taint them with our toxins;

We mine the earth that holds our dead

for grams of rare earth, sold by the tonne.

Why carve another name into this wounded soil

while the ledger of my debts lies open to the sky?

For the land to be fertile, I must be barren.

After the whistle,

the train rocks its cradle.

The platform gathers dust

around an absent child.

Inheritance without Heirs

Bloodwork