buoyant

When I think of home, I see the sea. I do not know what it means to feel like I belong more in water than I do on land. Bayu, my motherland, was named after the wind god Vayu, who scattered Sanskrit into Malay, daughters into diaspora. Sometimes I ask Vayu to tell me more of his antics when he blew my great-grandfather away from Khyber Pass and left a void in two worlds. Sometimes I ask him if he remembers teasing my mother's hair before she wore the hijab to answer a Call louder than any man's command. At times, I understand the wind more than anyone else because his tongue is always shifting. It only took me two years to cultivate an accent. See, I can be British, North American, regional creole, but only in my mouth. My face is too foreign to belong in one culture. Neither here nor there. When I put my hands in baba's and it's just us walking together at the market, I am either his mistress, or an adopted child. There is no resemblance, they say, so you must not be his. When I strut alongside my mother crossing the street, we are either carbon copies or sisters, but always 'other'. There is too much resemblance, they say, but too brown to be Malay, too strange to belong. But we all speak the same language, so I guess we are allowed to pretend that we are indeed, home.

for farkhunda

what compels a man

to do the things he does

what poison enters his heart

that makes him so cruel to me

even when i shield my face from him

he still finds a way 

to hurt parts of me i cannot see

dear man

when the rivers went dry

we wept until you had enough to drink

and when your stomach ached from hunger

we cut from our flesh

until you were satisfied

and when the foreigners came for you

we stretched out our bodies to defend you

and when they murdered you

we raised our hands to the heavens

and prayed for you

and when they spoke ill of you

we rallied the entire country 

to honour you

dear man

when you said to us

every soul will taste death

we did not know 

it is only in death

a woman's soul will finally feel peace

another fucking poem on finding “home” in the “third space”

if i wrote a love letter 
to the diaspora it would break
every word count undo 
every border erase
every dictionary definition unravel 
every noun/verb/adjective 
and unwrite itself 
no colonial tongue was made to 
describe or translate or sustain 
the pain trauma love
that is lived with every 
fractured   severed   healing diasporic breath

untitled

praying for erosion of borders
like praying for rain
both come naturally
with time