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.