She is no longer my mother.
She did not breast feed
my siblings. She was never
married to my father. I remember
how she wandered before the morning
toward a worn out
brick bridge
used only by cattle,
our cow Durga, our bull Shiva.
The moon breaks
into rapture
watching her undress.
How she pulls her left leg
from her underwear. How she kneels
over the grassy mattress--
breasts, round and small,
hang from her olive chest.
Her nipples, grape-dark,
tight in the late breeze.
My provocateur, you make me read
through the russet pages
full of words jagged like my desire,
letters linked like my mother's necklace.
But I promised never to share
it with anyone,
vowed to burn it
in the sacred flame,
flame that sputtered
during her last rite.
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