survivor’s guilt
Does x imitate y?
x | y
x = I smoke microchips. To catch a ride to myself; to tune the healing frequency.
y = The gaze my father gives the TV most of every waking minute.
***
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
***
My parents were in a car accident recently. The car is totaled. I asked my Dad if he was scared. He said he was and then laughed, “Maybe I am a normal person.”
***
We both are on anti-depressants.
What’s in your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh
***
The television is always on at my parent’s house. So much so, that spending time with my father is synonymous with watching television. I see my father come alive, albeit temporarily, with a laugh, a focus, even a connection, that so rarely exists outside of his time watching television.
***
We were in McDonald’s, both eating a fish filet sandwich, sharing fries. I think it was a road trip home from college. He told me about a robbery at the store. How he started beating the robber. “Dad, you can’t do that to people. It’s dangerous. These aren’t your kids.” He laughed, wiping his mouth, sandwich in hand. He starts shaking his head, “I sit all day counting pennies.” I was quiet. I took a sip of my coke.
***
We both hate talking on the phone. We make our partners do it. My father, because
Stuttering + thick accent = static to dickhead Americans.
Me, because I get ma’am-ed— it makes me want to die.
***
Slow. Floating. A habit. A choice. Exhale. Pause. An upgrade from cutting. From alcohol. From sex with strangers. Just me and my trusty pipe. Hallelujah.
***
I was part of a women of color spoken word troupe called, The Lyricistas when I was 18. Our first show was packed to a standing room at a spot on campus called The Cat n’ the Cream. I started crying on stage during a piece about my core inner trifecta: my father, clinical depression, and me. I don’t know how to let go/ I don’t know how to hang on/ I don’t want to leave you behind. Twenty years later, I’m still asking, is there freedom for my family too? What does individual freedom mean when family isn’t free? Why does freedom look so different then where I come from?
***
My father’s surrender to fading away into the background, away from the living, has shaped me. And by me, I mean my lens of the cost of being foreign and forgettable in the U.S. It was a seed of my politicization. My rage. I blamed America for its broken promises. It’s stunning con-artistry.
***
The mind-fuck of a depressed dad = alive parent gone
***
Dad lets compost our grief. make some poetry.
***
Growing up I remember thinking I wanted to get my parents a flat screen and all the Desi cable channels like the rich Desi families had. I wanted to buy them their freedom.
***
(Tell the racists there is no question: I’m so bloody American.)
***
My mom made dinner —after the car accident, after fractured ribs, after three buses from the hospital to home.
***
Ma, let’s sail into the horizon. I know you love the water.
***
My father’s surrender to fading away into the background, away from the living, sculpts the silence between us. My queerness, more clay for absence.
***
The silence is inundated with the noise of the television. North Indian soap operas, gameshows, and Bollywood movies. All reinforcing warped ideas of success that suffocate him. My Dad. All a portal to a time when he had hope.
***
Puff puff.
Operating system reset.
[Stare].
Reverse Migration
watch me fail, kindred.
my students look at me with a face you’d find at the bottom of a well. please help. get me out of here.
my face stepped off the crumbling edge. like the ridges of your silence. I don’t want my vacant body to
distract from what I am trying to say. which of course is that my 10-year-old-self dropped my walkman when I opened the car door. At the airport. I was not prepared to move. To homeland. And so my tangled
wires in the classroom are evidence of fracture in motion. In the lineage of my father’s stutter. my last meal with my brother was a big mac. I could not fit in my mouth. Goodbyes are not a happy
meal. reverse migration is psychotic said Bhanu Kapil. Mmm Uh huh. And yet the yield.
My parents’ sacrifice just a view from
my pastel ferris wheel. My queerness, contraband rocks,
baggage tipped scale
airport scolding. I’m trying to teach you the physics of fissures. the difference between marbles and peanut m&m’s.
the head shave ritual for babies. the caste system. the child beggar licking
my ice cream.
shadow me,
self.
