Leaving Home

To explain why I sing
may take (at the very least)
years.

The queen of the night is a flower
How can you expect me to forget its smell
outside the window.

Endlessly, we lived in this place that has
come to be called home.

Death, sickness, puberty. Children.
Loves.

We learned, unlearned
There are rules for everything.

We lived out of suitcases
cartons of unpacked magazines spawning new mice.

The bike does not run, the antiques are old.

Tradition did not give us longevity.

When she died they cut the gold bangles off her wrists,
with pliers.

I rode my bicycle (my aunt's, rusty)
through the cane chair
that was a wicket that day.

My memories are many,
Many kinds.

Six foot boy, scared of my grandfather at the gate,

Birthdays and custard-jelly.

The lamp is still lit twice a day,
even though she is dead.
He lights it now, having quit smoking at seventy, after she died.

I could have children by now.
The bread-wala will call me baby till the end of his days.

We came here, scrubbed the floor on hands and knees,
grew roots.

The city that (should have) meant nothing to me
or any of us
Tamil speakers, outcasts in Madras
The city I call home.

I sing,
I cannot begin to explain why

Unless you had seen the inside of the bathroom,
climbed up the rotting ladder to the roof
to find the carcass of a bird in the kitchen tank.

I can invite you in,
because I wiped the fungus off the sofas this morning.