What Do You Talk About My Land — Poems by Mayank Rastogi

I
mirror; you capture everything i’m not. failed at
last. who will look after me? i am not the limousine flower
that blooms by rivers. idiotic. i’m not capable of looking
after you. i’ll stir my cup in my suite, with fine muslin
sheets, and write about the damned. between the
table and the sheets, between you and me, wait,
let me repeat, how i turn into this corpse beneath the
earth. this arrangement of your children, looking at me
with hope. you tell them everything i’m not. a laid-back
deserter; compliant with your seas. mirror, mirror.
i’m your fairest. there, there. your eldest is in my heart,
with his tattered shirt, echoes on the lone hill on your farmland,
with the burden of the absence sinking him, an inch every year
into the ground.

II
soft paisleys now wreathe your head, as you are six feet under
i can only voice you as you were, voicing my goddess. lover, you
should have called my name out. the beloved. at midnight i breathe
slowly, to not wake you up. at midday, i put my arms into place.
as i said, you should have called my name out. i don’t remember it.
when the rain begins, my paisleys will bloom on your head and
the wreath no longer a wreath. ties will be severed, and the grass
will be mown. you’re no longer welcome here. my kaafir hands
can’t be kept on a table. they move from place to place, woman to
woman. man to man. when i write, my mother’s voice echoes at the
back of my tooth. nauseating, unclean.