POEM IN WHICH THE WORD IS NOT SPOKEN
There was never any evidence of it, between
them: my parents slept with their door wide open, in case
we should call, my father’s breath so close
I could hear the scrape of his snoring, which he would deny
in the morning. I heard how my mother woke early and turned
her body again and again, like a dog
trying to rest. When things were given—at birthdays and
Christmas—they would stumble, tilt forwards
and clasp their arms around each other,
like putting on a necklace. The only time the word was spoken,
beneath a winter skylight, the stars hid their faces, and my father
said I’m sorry, it was a joke. Sweat prickled thistles
into my armpits, which were growing hair before
everyone else, and I was at the worst stage of puberty,
all hair and no breasts, which meant girls at birthday parties
called me monkey. The only time I heard of it,
from my mother, was when I was grown, and had
a boyfriend—I knew she had seen,
sometimes, like a child who does not know yet,
me sitting on his lap, on the far-off sofa, the shag
tartan blanket thrown over us—she had heard, through the paneled
glass window, small moans, and asked why
cuttings of pubic hair wrapped in tissue—as if
they might grow into flowers—appeared
in the foot-closed bins before I left
home. So she sat me down in my bedroom and asked
how far I would go with this boy, as if there was an answer
apart from no. Well obviously I wouldn’t—I said—she stopped me
before the word was spoken—I was
glad—she had protected us both. In her life,
there had been no one to guide her before that first night,
and even the loss of blood each month was a trauma. When it happened,
I wanted to go to her with jasmine in my hair
and in my hands pulihora, the roar of curryleaf in oil. I wanted to go
after headbath, shoes left at the door, and tell her
how soft my skin was, afterwards, how little
could not be washed away. I wanted to take her and hold
her, not flinching, but I knew
that was not the way in our house, where we dealt in everything
except. So I stitched my mouth shut and found
I was hers—I had made myself her daughter
by my denial of it.
—from Rattle #79, Spring 2023
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Tanvi Roberts: “Once I was at a reading by the English poet Lavinia Greenlaw. An audience member asked her why she wrote poetry, and she answered elliptically, ‘Poets are often people who have difficulty with words.’ Several years later, I can’t find any better reason than this: Poetry allows us to struggle and play with words, to devote our attention to trying to capture the ones that cause us less difficulty, and to create an alternate world populated by those words.” (web)
