.

 Brother

Do you remember the day I burned my poems to keep your feet warm?

The man whom we mistook as our father smiled at us and his yellow hands lifted the hem of our mother's skirt

her half sung prayers withering to ugly kisses quenching his tobacco fatigue.

We waited outside playing games and licking the lollipops until our tongues changed into red,  weaving death beds for ourselves. 

We had August hidden in our throats, the fifteenth day shining in golden. 

We saw our names in the blue prints of new guns while we searched for bread in the diamond pockets of the man's khaki pants. 

We heard bullets singing ragas and covered our ears with Kashmiri shawls. 

Still we couldn't erase the ghosts dancing kathak, their anklets made of teeth of forgotten children burned in streets. 

As the day entered into its black coffin, we pressed our tongue to the cold metal and looked up to see our grand mother's breath moving through the chimney.

We collected tooth picks and grenade pins to make a ship but then we heard a  woman bending over her five year son telling "Our God is different from theirs".

We ran away then 

You promised to crack open her brain and plant a garden there not a hymn. 

We heard a man with white skin laugh while our sister read "Panchatantra".

He ate an orange from our white valley and said that orient oranges stink. 

Our mother looked at him and he promised her life, but we knew better.

He walked in the snow and we sighed because only us knew what was underneath the white grass, our brothers and sisters who remembered their voice. 

Sixty eight candles melted for our sister who dared to travel alone.

Brother,

Do you remember the oil stains of our hands clasped together while we watched sea gulls crying for the dead lovers? 

The garden statues of Red fort stared at us and taught us hope is like a bee sting and love is like a death sentence. 

You told me that God was reciting a funeral song for them even though he don't know their names.

He was paid for it in a currency we no longer know and jalebis we no longer taste.

Then we wished to crawl into the night,

to open our mother's womb and kill the bastards we are going to become. 

Brother, 

Do you remember my name? 

Do you remember your name?

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