Montréal - a love letter to the family I found, wherever you are

Your faces rise from the palms of my hands 

like petal offerings 

they sail out my window, 

eddying, swirling, 

they disappear into the ether, 

you have become the air I breathe, 

you sit sickly on my tongue. 

Balanced on this threshold sill, 

beyond  

newly acquainted, 

before 

freshly familial, 

still, 

the city I hear  

sings sweetly to the hair 

I no longer have. 

The light from my room stains the brick outside, 

blue dancers on red concrete, 

endless me, 

endless you, 

I become the wall across the alley, 

cradling myself  

I whisper tenderly, 

I am home. 

Such a foreign idea, of becoming home 

in this foreign city,  

for a moment I understand  

her foreign languages, 

I speak them knowingly 

I learn you as you learn me. 

The shadows mark my palms with henna, 

slithering towards my fingertips  

like a current, 

wafting as smoke, 

wetting the city, 

I see your faces in the raindrops on my arms. 

From the room beside mine, 

I hear you laugh,

from the moon above me 

I hear you sing 

that nazm of resistance, 

that binds us forever, 

that song of love 

that fills my lungs. 

Pure, without body, without person, 

without purpose aside  

from purpose to be 

we change form, we exist without 

we bind and blossom and laugh and love 

we hold each other, we cry aloud. 

To share this view, this moment, this feeling, 

to hold your hand and strut down the street 

with cat eyes, in kitten heels, 

to wake up beside you  

with painted lips and blood-stained teeth, 

we taste love, syrupy, sweet. 

I am lifted and spun around, 

I am smells of spice and liquor, 

we are freedom, we are colour, 

in the pluck of your strings, 

in the gentle purr of your sinking couch 

Joy I haven’t seen before 

in the faces around me 

in the faces that have become  

home 

that have become love 

that have become mirror 

that have become teacher  

that have become sibling  

that hold me  

and breathe gently 

of old lovers and new families 

I mark your knees and you mark mine. 

We trade languages as you beckon me, 

we learn ourselves as we learn each other. 

We are becoming home  

we're thumbing through 

the book of love  

powerful, anew,

my chest brims with a prism  

so full of pride 

the strength to fight for you. 

Yours is the face of love I see 

when I touch the sky  

and I feel the rip 

where silently 

the universe peeps in. 

Pure, true, without body, without person,  

without purpose aside  

from purpose to be 

to keep me home - 

though we drift and change 

in the now long locks of my hair 

I keep you safe 

I adorn my braids with the petals, 

I keep you home 

me with you 

and you with me.

about the poet

I am an illustrator, writer, and tattoo artist. I spent the first 19 years of my life in India, and am currently based in Montreal. I hold a Bachelor of Arts Hons degree from OCAD University where I studied Visual Culture and Critical Theory. My work mostly experiments with themes of sexuality and sensuality, the politics of body and gender, and the ideas of the self as a private and social being–always transient, always in flux. It is based around thoughts of identity, belonging, and becoming, and as such, brownness and queerness play significant roles in these explorations. I strive towards feeling, understanding, and expressing these various intersections to fulfill desires for a deeper intra and inter-personality.