By Shyla Basu
Ma, just weeks ago you would
call me when I was at work,
giggling that you just wanted
to hear my voice. A scoop of honey
has turned into one long email.
A formal, “Dear Shyla,
I hope you are doing well.”
All I can think about is when
the forgiving winter sun
watched over ripe guavas
sprinkled with black salt.
The way you knew exactly
when to slice them—
between my classes,
my shower breaks, my lunch.
You’d warm the parachute oil
between your palms before
kneading it into my scalp,
fingertips moving lazily in
slow, tender circles.
My hair swallowed the oil
with a thirst that even
the desert could not fathom.
Because love, at its best,
is water without a price.
And I deny it because
Ma, don’t you know by now?
I am trying my best to be
your daughter, a fingertip
pressed against the
wretched mirror between us.
I remember watching you
pull a hangnail, absentminded
—only now I see how
thoughtless pain can be—
a glob of blood
pooling at the corner.
I stared down at my own hands,
drops of clotted blood and
nails bitten to the quick,
struck mercilessly by the
copper strings of my guitar
since I first picked it up at eight.
My hands, too grisly to pass
for a girl’s - a girl that
barely knew any better,
didn’t know that even
soft things can break skin
if you hold them long enough.
These tiny wounds I carry are
inherited, yet never understood.
A storeroom overflowing
because you never learned
to let go. And how was I
ever supposed to
loosen my fist? And still,
you remain my mother,
even when I start looking
too much like the sins
you could not commit.
Ma, I do not mean to beg,
but I do not know how to love.
It’s too much until it’s too little,
until it eats me up
from the inside out.
The last time I fell apart,
you pushed my hair
behind my ear, stared right
into my soul, and said,
“You have no idea
how powerful you are.”
Ma, how do I hold the sun
without burning?
I cradle this love
with a devotion that could
scare even the gods away—
but how can I ever feel holy
when my own mother
cannot pray for me?
There is no manual for this, Ma.
McCartney told the world to take
a sad song and make it better,
but no song, no book, no movie
could teach a mother how
to hold on to a daughter
who does not believe in
her own salvation.
But I know this much—
if love is a story you keep telling,
then let me listen.
Let me rest my head
in your lap, Ma, hold me
like you did when I was nothing
but a pair of beady eyes—
pitless brown, just like yours—
peeking from the blankets.
Place a dot of kajal
behind my ear.
And maybe, just maybe,
Farida Khanum’s raspy voice
will echo our favorite ghazal:
“Tonight, please don’t insist on leaving.”