Kaavya

Kaavya Nov 2022

myselves

I’m told I was a twin in the womb,
And that is why my life is twice as lonely.
But sometimes it’s like
A different pair of eyes stare through mine
And my head is too small for all of its thoughts.
I hear her breathe, softly, from the chair I am sitting in.

Time passes, but we are still next door neighbors,
of limited use to each other, all hues and no gradients.
We are one note, the both of us, but it is only I that seeks harmony.
I call to her, but she may not hear. I feel her approach though,
a tsunami in the guise of the tide. My feet submerge,
and my lungs flood.

Somedays, her door is open. I am afraid, but I will enter.
It is but a blink, a walk through a wall of water,
And then there is a stranger in my house.

Kaavya Oct 2022

recovery

At the base of the mountain
I meet a man who sells prayers.
I do not know what to wish for
so I take them all.
One for dreamless nights,
One for gentle tide.
One for locked doors,
One for shameless pride.

At the ridge that separates sky and earth
I find myself in a pond.
It asks me not
to see life a series of obstacles.
I kneel to drink,
but am offered no cup.
The water is beyond me;
I must climb further up.

At the tip of this world,
At a place I have no proof of,
I am close enough
to touch the moon.
In some versions, she descends
and I come away blessed.
In others, I just wonder
where there is to go next.

Kaavya Sep 2018

open windows

the secret to
   any open window
i found over
   three different lives.

i spend the
   next trying to
share it. but

what matters is:
   a broken ocean
a gentle gradient
   your breathing heart.

Kaavya Sep 2018

In transition

Say I defined time in quarters -
A flash of lightning, an inflamed heart
a silent revolution, a fallen photograph.
Suddenly life is too short.

Say I divided a circle into thirds -
Hush, no space for shelved dreams
And buttoned up plaid shirts.
We do not break bread with discontinuity.

Say I had two hemispheres of life -
too many secrets spill from my ears:
the nook where I braid my hair into knots
the reason not to walk a beach at night.

Say I was brave enough to erase all lines -
unexpectedly, it is not enough, not at all.
I breathe even with the wind-whistle in my skull,
but then it is not a breath, how unready am I?

Kaavya Aug 2018

Self

The stories I have to tell may not all be true. This is why,
when I break open my fortune cookie at family dinner I
get a message, poetry is for the selfish. Words that come
from my father who holds my cosmos in his reading glass,
thoughts stolen from my mother who is determined to curve
my shadow into a snow globe.

You see, I have a theory about resistance: I exist
in the tension between warring magnets, a wormhole
between universes that have no blue and green for me,
my soul a tribute to the fact: poetry is for the selfish. I made
my apologies already, sorry for being loud in the wrong
ways and quiet in the right ones.

You see, in this life I can have only one favorite color but
in reality the answer is always C#. In this life I have woven
a web to keep my head above the clouds just so my feet can sink
two inches into ocean sand. Poetry is for the selfish, says the spider
at the crown of my head. And if all I can allow myself is four letters,
I’ll take them with the uneven edges of piano keys and the shadow
of something more wholehearted.

#identity #freedom

Kaavya Jul 2018

cultural vase

i’ll say it again. this is the only
time i write with music. listen now and i’ll spin
the wheel again, an ocean is no excuse for a tipped balance. trace
origins back to சாதம், வீடு, பறவை. tip-toe to reach the top half of the
stove, where the stories and the music are, but hand on head, not quite there yet. in the meantime, i hope my hands become as fire-glazed as yours one day. listen now and i’ll tell you how to live a life in compromises. here, come help me with my சாறி, no, i don’t have flowers for your hair, because there are are two different languages
in this house. inhale savory vowels and lives rolled into the sun, exhale தயிர் without salt, a theoretical childhood, heart with
half the guilt. listen now for something i told my அம்மா:
travel eight thousand miles by foot and open one eye,
make a phone call and taste dew- glittering நெய்
தோசை. listen now for a final time. when
there are not enough unfurled petals of
this world, look up and find the
பௌர்ணமி in a hidden
corner of your heart.
blink once to skip time
zones, twice to remember the
promise of a thousand locusts and monsoon rain.

Glossary of தமிழ்/tamil words (in order of appearance)
சாதம்/saadham: cooked rice
வீடு/veedu: house
பறவை/paravai: bird
சாறி/saree: traditional clothing
தயிர்/thayir: yogurt, curd
அம்மா/amma: mom, mother
நெய் தோசை/ney dosai: rice pancake with ghee
பௌர்ணமி/pournami: full moon

#heritage #language

Kaavya Jul 2018

History-Keeping

I learned how to write from ghosts,
at a time I didn’t trust anything
more concrete.
Afraid of the ravens, searching for my eyes,
I drew heat from the thinnest whispers
the most deceptive mountains.
And when I couldn’t take it, I also grew feathers,
to escape the birds tearing at my hair.
Letter by letter, I claw back.

I learned how to write from the bottom of a cave
a place I thought I’d been to
already.
I felt it this time, the poetry
humming from my lips
and my heart
tip-toeing across an open window.
The sun pours in, dripping fire and honesty.
I swallow.

I learned to write so I could follow the river,
imagine the mirror
that is a drop of rain
so that I’d find the curve
in the plane of my soul.
And now, I write from the ghost
of my thoughts,
the metallic edges that spin breathing colors
the worlds in which I have wings.

#poetry