I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf
a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding,
while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father
and my mom’s grandfather
worked for kings administering temples
and collecting money for their king
from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia
where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.
They both left their homes
before they left for college.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  He went to work, then England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away
before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.