I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter , my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass, the grass warmed my feet.
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier
but in the meadow, the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.