A PALETTE OF LIGHT AND SHADEY
The alleys of my mind
Take a winding route,
Forever trying to catch up
With the real me, the whole of me.
Am I the colour of my skin?
Defined by my birth motherland,
Anointed by my adopted motherland,
Or in no man’s land?
Am I like the budding hope of spring,
The unashamed bloom of summer,
Like the mellow crackling of autumn
Or the dreary grey of winter?
Am I the foreigner, the immigrant,
The second-tier citizen, the interloper?
Or a multicultural, able adaptor,
A friend, colleague, key worker, and leader.
Is there space for me, all of me?
Or shall I live my life
As a series of halves,
The segments of an arc, never the full circle?
My meandering thoughts
As always, find refuge in the womb of nature,
Where one tableau flows into another
As frames of a movie coming together.
For the sun is low, then high,
Fiercely bright, then hidden behind clouds,
The moon curves into a sliver, disappears,
And becomes whole again.
My shadow shrinks under the noon sun
And grows tall at the edge of daylight.
Sometimes I whimper and whisper,
At others, burst into glorious song.
I straddle two lands
And the turbulent seas.
These shifting, lifting shades
Are all part of my palette, the whole of me.
———
THE SHAPE OF GRIEF
Grief was a mountain,
Immovable, impossible to cross,
Looming dark, terrifying,
Casting all in shadow.
Grief was the high tide,
Rushing in relentlessly,
Sweeping all in its wake,
My leaden feet stuck in the sand.
Grief is a sluggish river,
The gentle rhythm broken by small ripples,
The shore across a dull green-brown haze,
The shadows dappled with weak sunshine.
Grief is a dark silhouette in my bed
That shrinks away by day,
Occasionally emerges outside the window
Where pink-hued spring blossoms grow.
———
WAITING
Waiting for sunrise
And the calls from back home to start.
Dreading the call,
Yearning for the call.
For the neighbour to say,
“Your father is breathing, he is eating.”
Waiting for the money transfer to go through.
“You need to pay within two hours or lose the bed.”
Parents waiting in Reception for entry into the hospital,
The living and the dead equally silent.
Waiting for air, hell is no oxygen.
“Sorry, ventilator is for four hours only, others are
waiting.”
“The doctor had a kind voice,” my mother says
While waiting in the corridor for her beloved’s body to
be bagged
Waiting in the car park for the cremation,
His body shrouded in her sari.
Ambulance number 1722, token number 284.
Dozens of pyres lighting the sky, a 42°C summer.
On the long journey home with an empty house waiting.
Waiting at home, imprisoned by the virus.
Waiting for vaccines without borders,
For sharers, not hoarders.
Waiting for larger hearts, smaller egos.
Meanwhile, we live, work, and breathe.
Waiting for the thump-thump of guilt to subside,
For the flood-tide of despair to recede.
Waiting for a different dawn,
Waiting to embrace my motherland and mine.
———
A SIMPLE LIFE
My mum lives, long after she is gone.
I can feel her gentle lingering,
Emitting shafts of light
That went out quietly a decade ago.
In a dusty, creaking drawer in her room,
A fine-toothed comb, a scrunched hair bun.
Hair clips in black, brown, and silver,
Safety pins nestling with hairpins.
A blue box with needle and thread, hooks, buttons.
Forever mending…
Bright red sticky bindis, a hand mirror,
Handkerchiefs washed and carefully folded.
A few feet away in her wardrobe,
A faint rose fragrance rising through the rusty hinges.
A frayed cardigan I had gifted her years ago,
Light pastel saris neatly folded.
Petticoats and blouses to pair with the saris,
Some cotton nightgowns we had shopped for together.
The few jewels and silk saris
Cleared and distributed by my dad in grim, moist-eyed
silence.
The memories frozen in time, preserved in mothballs.
The room untouched by my dad except when we visit.
Mum’s delicate features leaping out of a flower-decked
photo in the hall,
The efficient kitchen she had designed now meagerly
stocked.
Sixty years of a simple life
Rich with dignity and grace.
A soft voice, a ferocious brain
In the memory of a demure gaze, her bright presence
lives on.
———
A PLACE OF SAFETY
It was her fifth stop that night.
In search of a place of safety.
The smell od stale food, fresh urine, old clothes.
And the rank odour of tear trailed her;glued to her skin.
She was too old for the children’s ward,
Too young for the adults’ unit.
Too risky for the children’s home,
Too unwell for the police cell; too well for Casualty.
No beds in the borough, sorry.
Then back in the police van, long miles.
Driven through the heart of darkness,
In search of a place of safety.
It started after her seventeenth birthday,
When the demons from the past came again.
She screamed, swore, punched, kicked,
For the voices and images to go away.
They danced, relentless, in front of her
Till she was numb, exhausted,
The fight oozing out of her cuts red and thick.
Squeezing shut her veins, her face bloodless white.
The doctors, social worker, police officer
Warily stepped in, trespassing into her private hell.
“You are detained under the Mental Health Act.”
“We will take you to a place of safety.”
Numbers rent the air; words bounced off her headphones.
13 foster placements, 24/7 observations, date of birth.
“Challenging, abusive, aggressive, hostile,”
“Transition policy, serious untoward incident.”
Onto a sterile, soulless room;
A nurse next to her bed, one in the corridor.
She prowled in the space like a caged tiger,
Finally took the tablets the nurse held out.
Welcome oblivion soon set in,
The journey halted but only briefly.
A respite before her search ended
For a place of safety.
A thought nagged at her;she pushed it away.
Was it in the ageless land of the dead where there was no
fear or favour,
Where a place wad always assured?
A place of safety.
———
PEA SOUP(ER)
Migrating to the UK, hey?
Let’s help you along the way.
You are a doctor, maybe,
Or have landed on our shores in a dinghy?
Rwanda… racism, did you whisper?
No, it’s not a whitewash, nor slander, it’s mere banter.
It’s to stop those small boats,
It’s about people staying alive and afloat.
In any case, don’t worry about the colour of your skin,
It’s all about inclusion – Black, Brown, or in between.
We can do an induction
Of UK customs and traditions.
So, the alphabet soup, you see,
Is not about a gently floating ABC medley.
———
