An ode to my mother

My mother has paper lips / beautiful, stale pages of love rubbing against each lip.
She sings a dream of a crochet bag, each night, the times when I am unwell.
My mother often dresses in saree that is obscure and restless,
a brown hem of her dress slightly caressing my face.
And I begin to decode her fears/ her prayers/ her clandestine sins.
She is a slime ball of crisp yellow frustration leaking.
A palindrome.
Oh, mother, you creature of a goddess!
Your feverish footstep of laid back dreams/ a word which you often can’t pronounce.
You are too strong and surreal to gulp,
with a staircase lost somewhere in your hair-bun,
you walk in your nylon ivory night dress,
fidgeting throughout the pathway.
You stumble and walk.
still, you walk, mama.
A birth giver to stars.
You own this starry night, behind the loop of your ear ring,
too small and fancy
voicemails lost in this sky so empty.
Your foot my home, mother.
My poem your sleep.

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