bliss station ~ poetry

domains

in the beginning of the album I was on

a rock where the ocean ends, looking up

at my mother is smiling, held together

by my father is smiling, the lens flare

is smiling overheads, the sea froth is

smiling at our feet, all at once but

never touching. how many divergent

steps did it take to not tip the smile

but level it on all levels except maybe

these photos that rise like the goddess

the place is named after to meet the

fishermen casting their nets composed

of nows -

halfway, my sister says you left me behind.

I'm three-ish in the photo. I tell her I was

too small to carry her then. it's kanyakumari

named after the virgin lighthouse goddess

where arabian sea meets bay of bengal meets

indian ocean, the three tussling on the surface

                    but churning under it -

just domains for our genes to write travel blogs

on, we think some thinking - where can we go

except not away from each other nested in a

neighbor's house when mother is in the ICU

some passed down textbooks, some indistin-

guishable pre-puberty telephone voice pranks

some shared phones, some stranger asking

is that your sister looking at the girl on the

school assembly stage getting a medal who

suddenly looks like you, & some innocent

shoplifting - we think some thinking has

                     made us something more -

I am still too small, what we carry also grows.

my sister swaps the album with her biology

textbook that once was mine, asks what does

dorsoventrally mean. I don't say it's just us

under the wait of days, flattened both sides.

in the end, she puts the album back not to be

caught in the act of caring all at once & then 

                                                having to explain why.

~Ajay

16/9/2020