Love For My Lava – A Poem by Rachana

It’s not a recurring dream —
it’s my childhood in technicolor.

I’m in Eluru again,
first-floor balcony,
colored baby chicks
strut past the open street sewer.

Over the brick wall,
police cadets march —
stiff, precise,
the way colonizers drilled them,
looking ridiculous under the sun.

Every summer
I come for the warmth of my people,
but before I can hug my grandmother
I must tread
your boiling lava face.

We both don’t tell each other
how proud we are
of the other’s existence.
Instead,
with dilated pupils,
she and I eat in silence —
digging white rice from steel vessels
that never break,
only dent.

My grandma, stick-thin,
frets over her bloated belly.
Oh ammamma,
how much I would kill
to wear your size zero.
I rest my head in her lap,
afraid I’ll break
her bird bones.

My legacy, wrapped in a cotton sari,
is disappearing
like the stone I threw
into the backyard well
that never echoed —
Grandma’s legacy now,
sinking
into the water I stirred.

We don’t count time
by birthdays anymore.
We count it by landings —
each year marked
by the moment
my feet hit
your hot, round belly.

Mosquitoes bite,
the same ones as Florida,
as Costa Rica —
and yet
somehow
they sting more
here.

Happy birthday to the pothole
on my street —
as old as me.

Rosemary in Atlanta once said,
“Carpet the rooms.
Your feet will thank you.”
Marble tiles in my mother’s house.
But why don’t my feet ache here?

Presidents and chiefs come and go,
but as long as the roadside stall
sells bajjis for 45 rupees,
nothing else matters.

Grandma has no followers or likes
but she shares
four of her fifteen peanuts.
I came home to save them
in my trinket box,
labeled:
June 13th, 2022.

I curse the sweat
on my morning walk.

A child stretches his arms out for candy.
I laugh — tell him not today.

A woman I see every morning
breaks a drumstick from the tree
and places it in my hand.
Pulusu chesuko,
she tells me, make a stew.

My father points to the corner
where his phone was stolen,
two men on a motorbike.

I think, come now,
I’ll handle you rascals.

We walk home as he tells me
about the uncle honey-trapped,
never found.

My mother packs me chekkalu —
food that tastes like home.
I wrap them carefully,
like gold in my suitcase.

As I stare at the beach,
I want to say to the guy next to me
Dude, look up —
I traveled 8,000 miles for this beach
and you’re staring at your phone?

I fight a young girl
not to toss her chips packet
onto the sand.
She laughs,
walks away —
I curse like an Indian aunty
under my breath,
may this mountain of debris
swallow you one day.

I’m getting high
on salt water.

An auto for a kilometer walk from the beach
takes an hour
waiting for the chief minister’s motorcade —
I crane my neck.
He waves.
Not at me.
At one-point-four billion faces
exactly like mine.

At the bank,
red paan stains on the wall —
Bollywood heroes
selling us the ghutka fantasy.

Sunset. Streets flood with people —
honking prayers at every corner.
From another fifth-floor balcony,
twenty years ago,
I saw the Bay of Bengal.
Now only dogs mounting one dog
until it bleeds,
part of this divine,
bat-shit-crazy orchestra.

Like any long-distance love,
my heart bursts at the thought of you
from afar.

Here,
the heat folding me in.
I swear it aloud
I will never come back.

And India keeps selling herself anyway.
I will return.
I always do.
Even if next year is the last.

To kiss your lava face
one more time.

Heck, I’m already plotting —
a bare room
on my small piece of land,
then straight to Mother Ganga,
to cool my ashes in her,
forever cradled
in her sacred waters.

– 0 –

Poetry

Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence. ~ Randall Jarrell