Migration, Exile…These Are Men’s Words

Migration, Exile…these are men’s words.
Women have always been torn up
like rice seedlings to be replanted
in marriage (or another name);
my language weeps its wedding melodies
in many dialects, many tunes
In my next life, O God, don’t make me a daughter:

Exile, Migration…what meaning then?

I am no woman-poet-migrant-in-exile.
Keep your labels, please.

I am not tamed by toil, shoulders stiff
with xenophobia; nor a person of colour
shunted to workshops where grievances
grow in collegiality. I am a nomad,
homeless, rootless, I am the zephyr —
the vayu that breezes past rooted trees.
I swish past suburbs, four-bedroomed homes,
theatered basements, the two-car garage;
nothing stops me as I skim by brooks
snake to large rivers, course by course,
I am fed by a hunger, sharper than
life, to live in this;to suck bare
a skin, tender as peeled lychees, always
terrified that there may not be another
rebirth to appeal to.

For now, there is this. New
beginnings, another journey,
roads unravelling untraveled.

I find my muse as much
as she finds me, without
home or temple, veena
in hand, book in another,
in the feminine infinite we
make our home.

*“Migration, Exile…These Are Men’s Words” first appeared in Sugarmule (USA), May 2013.