had an uncle who preferred flavored alcoholic beverages over therapy,
belching his soul from the nether regions of the temple’s forehead,
first time i glimpsed Ma Kali’s red tongue lashing out,
lava pouring onto the blackened ground,
first time i flew,
second time, i cried,
clutched at my mother’s shawl,
murmuring, eyelids stuck, deepening sense of the divine,
amidst buttoned shirts reeking of deodorant, and coriander,
hair still parted, red lines paving,
once, my mother warned me not to open my mouth,
when the priest would fling, allegedly, water he’d received from the ganges,
for us in the divine kingdom of central jersey to lap up,
“keep your head down, keep your mouth shut,” she pushed my head low,
as the crowd of khakis surged, the gray beads of the divine,
crawling with worms, and sewage, and deadened skin.
my uncle burped, laughed, fell off a chair.

the south indian temples crowd out the skyline, rising up like lost cities should,
the gujarati ones are scattered all over, between strip malls, behind gas stations,
hovering through the clouds, searching for motels to squeeze into.
as an adult, i attend when i can, memories flowing through,
ma asks for rides, so i oblige,
i wear a chain of Kali she gifted me before having another vision of chutney,
and the perfect lottery numbers, demanding we buy some next.
we scratch them on the hood of the car in the temple parking lot,
“betaa, why, why,” deep breaths. i promise to buy more but lies fill my gut
Kali, the goddess of destruction and creation, looms, so we head past the fugue state,
the traffic punching our toes, our heads,
we manage to find our way into the temple, where the priests who speak in gibberish
___descend
and ma ignores them, sighs, grabs a piece of fruit that’s been blessed, takes it with her,
her face is covered in cracks,
she grabs my hand and we proceed toward the car sputtering fumes,
the black snow sticking.

i refuse the brahmin ceremony when i’m thirteen,
at 17, i choose another temple to find myself in, then another, and yet another,
ma meets another man from the community, breaks up with him in a matter of
___months,
more like seconds,
she paces in the living room one evening as i’m trailing after memories of being
___away,
“i said i’d make some keechori” for the next celebration.
anyone can tell she doesn’t really want to, amongst the sea of gossip,
the aunties spreading rumor like a pestilence, the uncles rubbing their swollen insides,
i tell her i’d help make her some,
“you can’t cook for shit,” she exclaims, in bits of bengali i can recollect, and laughs.
i laugh too, but admittedly, i picture the task, i picture finding love,
i picture never going back, i picture driving to the hudson, and collecting its water,
and spraying it through a super soaker at everyone.
i picture my mom laughing at this.