My Illiterate Mother

A software to read and write is not installed in my mom’s system. We download pages of ignorance. Sometimes, her monitor is blank. Our neighbors wake up hearing the divine songs from a rural temple, when I jump up listening to the metal words rattling in the kitchen. She pours calumnies into the ear-buckets nearby from her vast tank. There are pores on her palms, and her liquid money always leaks through. My dad is often tossed on her tongue. Today the sea is serene. I hear the roar of some unnamed anxieties from her white shell. I grew up on her barren lap. My tap-root went down so deep. I resisted the droughts. Thanks, Mom. I owe you for all my burning blooms. [First published in Westerly by Western Australian University]