Can the subaltern speak?

You only get words
If you're an nth generation immigrant
Where n is not  zero.
(Makes sense -
0 is nought
a naturalized number).

But
The words you receive are magical:
"Thank you (for leaving your home)"
From rupi kaur daughters, and
"Sorry (can you repeat that)"
From everyone else.

Constellations

A hugging couple nuzzles noses lazily
On the patch of grass near me
As I gaze at the batch of stars above me,
Linking with little lines
Fires that burn infinitely apart. 

The Past

The past exists
As a collective fiction
Like the law
Or democracy
Or LLCs.
It lives only in the fallible minds
of people.

Revolutionary Road

Encapsulation of suburban
Subhuman men and women
All their concerns trivialities
Their merry-go-around motions.
I feel chilled by the idea
That we can all of us be reduced to
Mice, our importance written away
By penetrating words. The veneer of
Relevance we clothe ourselves in
Is flimsy as parchment paper to
Ink. 

Old Leaves

All the days I had known you
Lay still and drying as old leaves
How was it that a single touch was all
It took to catch fire?
Surely you have touched me before?
As friends?
Perhaps our memories
Weren't old and dry then
As they are now. 

Rue Prince Arthur

These streets are cold and brittle. Every step reminds me of you, the slightly uncomfortable walks we took together, avoiding gravel and glances as we move from place to place, place to place, always moving, scared to be still. Still, the memory of the cold warms me, the memory of your lips that broke with blood and ice as you defiantly declared that last night you had taken scissors and cut off placenta-like morality, that you had bled all night, that blood demanded to be free.

Crisp clean and broken you were that day we walked for an hour through the snow, and that is how I remember you.

Skype

My grandmother
holds up a half-finished #FF0000 pixel,
in an anxious voice loud enough
to traverse the seven thousand miles between us
asks if I like the colour.

Now, Internet speeds
in the Newest of Delhis
are from the 90s,
but can she hear the pardesi (but desi)
guilt in my assurance
that I love the scarf?

My grandmother smiles, then coughs:
adds a million particles
to the ppm of pm10
(thankfully, the PM is zen
about pollution.)

She coughs, and the audio splinters, reminds me
of how my voice kept breaking up
the last time I saw my grandfather's face
(his nostrils were stuffed with cotton,
against the poisonous air) -

Precious pixel-packing packets
lost somewhere in the seven thousand miles between us.