My Spine

July 21st, 2012

In my spine I imagine a brontosaurus tail

Ancient, petrified and rigid

Bone segments hovering in space

Arcing into endpoints

Finite

In my spine I remember the future fears

Of inheriting his

Shrinking him by inches at age 18

Forever capping growth

And disintegrating cartilage connectors

Potential fused into a handicap sticker

Dangling from the dashboard

In my spine I seek aliveness

Sensation beyond a structure

That keeps me standing

Beyond a beam that bolsters my gait

In my spine I unlock fluids of vitality

Twisting, wringing out toxins

Arms and legs splayed and extended,

I reach past length

And find immaterial

Forever

In my spine I envision a trail

My heart walks

From hip holding sacred sensuality

To crown of synaptic power

Massaging in awareness and compassion

With each kiss

Conjuring fertile soil

This sitting, a portal

*First week of Ramadan 2012*

I take my pastel musalla[1]

Match the edge to yours

Flower arches lifting off into

Three-dimensional domes

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

Tuck orni under chin

Make sure it’s secure

You help me without condescension

As you always do

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

These days you use a chair

12 hour shifts serving others

sucked out calcium from bones

Both of our hands blossomed with knowledge

Here is our niyat[2]

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

I look over at the musalla cover

Nani had sewn for me

And I never use

Pearl-beaded, gaudy pink

Crumpled at the bottom of vain dispossession

Later in Bombay I’d hear of her agile, crafting hands

Giving, giving, just like you

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

I take my time

Wanting to pronounce with my new

Arabic prowess

We meet at the tahiyyat[3]

Turning heads at ancestors

Ghost limbs growing nerves

In an instant

This sitting is a portal

Feet settled is magic

Next to you is divine remembrance

---

[1] Prayer mat

[2] intention

[3] direct translation: greeting; last prayer of namaaz or salaat 

End of vision

 

Length. Length of string and extended hopes of flight. The invisible connection between this grilled rectangle rooftop and a square of colored paper stretched over wood sticks and set against the unknown, as if to say, it’s possible to rise. Careful measure of slack and tension, both ends tug to give you shape though you continually defy us and carve your own path in the sky. I hold an end of you in my hand, feeding more of you into infinity, lengthening you with my intentions.

And when the head of your purpose bursts off like a plump bud, you plummet as well but without the violence of falling. You drift gently towards the familiar element of earth; bound to its gravity just as you’ve floated above it, it is another home. I wonder where you land and trace your journey back to my hands.

I wind and reel and retract and you inch along the streets. Knotted around and amongst the coarse and crumbling barked branches. I pull you through a Banyan tree, the tree that named my first home in India, where roots crowd in curtains, draping down and dangling towards the soil they’ve left, making beginnings ambiguous in this swarm of life and growth. You run across the back of a street dog, cradled in dirt, her home wherever she can be unnoticed for a little while. You dip into the communal steel pot, triangle cuts of white plastic falling near the gas cylinder, mouths of milk releasing sharp streams, leaves loosening brown/red color in a seething bath. This moment is home for all those whose thoughts press into glass cups.

You weave a dance past commotion, sliding between the feet of four people staggered in the backseat of a shared rickshaw, feeling for ripeness on stacks of round and taut skin. The movement that crosses you never ceases your steadiness.

And soon I see your tail crawl up the side of the building, over the terrace wall, the spool in my hands containing your ephemeral journey and all I can think of doing is launching you out again and again because you don’t belong here, so tangible and material in my hands.