for Bimla Sharma
I see the force of a celebrant with power in gold banglettes
on somebody’s hilltop. I was reminded of my mother while admiring it,
as she loves miscible jewelry all over hands and wrists. I thought one moment garish,
even as I was raised in this quality and felt it was a real acquisition. I was cut
from my mother’s cloth because I agreed wholeheartedly in how I couldn’t help my own
mixing, my own tastelessness. I tried to admit it as a faultline but saw the contradiction
it held up in the light. It was my mother, an immigrant: she wanted me to blister about,
shoving my own glittery power aside, into the trees. I did but became
embarrassed when we all fell over, truncating our purposes, ridiculed, learning of a recognition
that I shouldn’t have tried to build this particular push, especially in my
vulnerable state. I will never attach to power again and be put into the position of pleasing
a group to make my point. I called four of them bullies
because they misread my desires. I defended myself from their pettiness.
If they thought I was performing for them they are all wrong. This is why celebrations can
sometimes end the day cheaply. Let’s reassemble the discord, industrializing a brilliant cut,
the gem of bridging purposes burning the might of hostilities, so their
prolonged pressure might truly break its thickset stench where we might find my mother
in bed nearing the end of her life. I must remember that it wasn’t a worthless fight.