[CLEARS THROAT]
OK, this is a little bit longer.
It's called "Postcards to my Sister on my Wedding Day."
"OK so, I don't know how the accident happened.
But I know the table in the corner is egg yellow.
The lilies and the blue vase have cast off their arms.
It's heartbreaking how children lose their bodies
to themselves.
To small silver crosses shining at the pulses of so many
pale girls' throats.
I've loved them my whole life.
I've draped sarees within the pages of poems
as if I had the right.
I guess I'm still trying to keep you alive.
Is it you who moves my hands and what arcs over bar tops,
while the invisible suburban keeps spinning, keeps spinning,
keeps spinning, keeps spinning, keeps spinning around
until my shoulders fucked and you die?
I've looked for you all day in the likeliest places.
Pages of photo albums, gluey with disuse.
Photos of your girlfriends.
Did you know Lauren has grown up?
Married?
Yesterday she took her daughter to your tree,
the one they planted only because you died.
I've never seen your headstone, just the plastic box someone
scribbled your name and age too quickly on.
What should I say?
Happy Death-iversary?
I'm so pissed at you for leaving that one
black hair on the towel they used to dry your corpse.
Plus the lilac dress, the one I had too,
which is still hanging in the room
[? Ammu and Abbu call ?] your room.
I'm so pissed at you for leaving.
If you want to play the shade pulled over the window,
I guess I'll play the sister who slapped you beside it.
If absence wants to play a father quiet with guilt,
I'll play the bride-to-be awake in your room
the night before my wedding.
Breaking open the wide eyed dolls facing eastward,
still pristine on their shelves.
Play the shade sister, that snaps open.
You're never going to call me aapa again.
The hem has got to be dry by dawn,
and I can't stand to rub it away without you
for my promised poems."