Devjani Bodepudi

            You watch over her sleep like you have done countless nights

            before you let sleep come over you.

            You take her warm hand soft like down and kiss it once

            whispering a prayer

            Never depend on another

            like I do now.

            Never love without a reason to love

            Because reason will spare you pain

            you begin.

            You stop.

            You open the window

            draw the curtain tighter

            let in the air

            block out the light.

 

            You remember your own mother’s words

            she demanded you hear so you would be spared 

            something like humiliation if you spoke up.

            She told you to keep the peace, let the men be.

            But ideas like humiliation, submission, like peace

            are flipped like a fish that has browned too deeply on one side.

            So your prayer is not your mother’s as you clasp your baby’s hand

            to your mouth to her ear, her eyes closed as you near.

 

            Be angry – whenever the moment demands

            be a gale, the sightless storm that fells the calm 

            stoic trees

            which stand silent in reprise 

            before the rains

            be the queen of all rage 

            and reason

            Because it will carry you away like a chariot

            pulled by a thousand silver swans into the air

            into the night

            up into the stars

            where the men cannot follow

            where the air is too thin to swallow

            anything but love.

            And she sleeps with those words hung like firefly in the dark of her room 

            and you are tired. 

            You turn to turn off the lights,

            check the window one last time,

            and you glimpse the stars beyond the rooftops

            waiting for your swans and your chariot that may still come.