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.