Too Many I’s And Yet Not
An Abecedarian
An alphabet of fear, I was born a
breach baby, first
child. Only
doll — a barbie with weak joints. You are
easy, the first boy I spilled my tongue to said. You’re
fast, said the next.
Go to your room, my mother said, no
halter tops for you, no house keys, take some extra
ice-cream. Stop crying, not me, your dad will be mad.
I was i & shortsighted eye, thick spectacles i, bad-postured, not an
inch between my chin and answer sheets
i despised geography, 195 countries, and I in my 150 sq. feet
I prayed to my mother’s god in the shower for permission
just for a weekend trip. And the forever-first-ranker me
kept cracking
little keys on
maps of what ma & pa fight about.
Nobody knew the pimple-squeezing language I spoke at night, I was
one corner room with grey
peeling paint
quiet with my feet, hands quite
restless. I stole once, a
sleeping pill from mum’s vanity case. If they
taught me as much about family as about faraway wars, I’d
understand how happiness too can be an unknown
violence.
What is a family? war warer warest or
x = (arranged marriage) / [(compromise) - (ma’s prayer beads) - (pa’s anger) + (Sunday cartoons)], or when
you know the word love but not its correct usage such that even its mention makes you
zig and zag away from your own first person.
About the author
Preeti Vangani is a poet & personal essayist. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions), her first book of poems (winner of RL India Poetry Prize). Her work has been published in BOAAT, Gulf Coast, and Threepenny Review, among other journals. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass, a Poet Mentor at Youth Speaks, and holds an MFA (Writing) from University of San Francisco.