The Sun and Her Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

photo of the man
    her husband did not look like anymore
    - the new world had drained him

    what if
    there isn’t enough time
    to give her what she deserves
    do you think
    if i begged the sky hard enough
    my mother’s soul would
    return to me as my daughter
    so i can give her
    the comfort she gave me
    my whole life
    i want to go back in time and sit beside her. document her in a home movie so my eyes can spend the rest of their lives witnessing a miracle. the one whose life i never think of before mine. i want to know what she laughed about with friends. in the village within houses of mud and brick. surrounded by acres of mustard plant and sugarcane. i want to sit with the teenage version of my mother. ask about her dreams. become her pleated braid. the black kohl caressing her eyelids. the flour neatly packed into her fingertips. a page in her schoolbooks. even to be a single thread of her cotton dress would be the greatest gift.
    - to witness a miracle

    1790
    he takes the newborn girl from his wife
    carries her to the neighboring room
    cradles her head with his left hand
    and gently snaps her neck with his right
    1890
    a wet towel to wrap her in
    grains of rice and
    sand in the nose
    a mother shares the trick with her daughter-in-law
    i had to do it she says
    as did my mother
    and her mother before her
    1990
    a newspaper article reads
    a hundred baby girls were found buried
    behind a doctor’s house in a neighboring village
    the wife wonders if that’s where he took her
    she imagines her daughter becoming the soil
    fertilizing the roots that feed this country
    1998
    oceans away in a toronto basement
    a doctor performs an illegal abortion
    on an indian woman who already has a daughter
    one is burden enough she says
    2006
    it’s easier than you think my aunties tell my mother
    they know a family
    who’ve done it three times
    they know a clinic. they could get mumma the number.
    the doctor even prescribes pills that guarantee a boy.
    they worked for the woman down the street they say
    now she has three sons
    2012
    twelve hospitals in the toronto area
    refuse to reveal a baby’s gender to expecting families
    until the thirtieth week of pregnancy
    all twelve hospitals are located in areas with high south asian immigrant populations
    - female infanticide | female feticide

    remember the body
    of your community
    breathe in the people
    who sewed you whole
    it is you who became yourself
    but those before you
    are a part of your fabric
    - honor the roots
    when they buried me alive
    i dug my way
    out of the ground
    with palm and fist
    i howled so loud
    the earth rose in fear and
    the dirt began to levitate
    my whole life has been an uprising
    one burial after another
    - i will find my way out of you just fine

    my mother sacrificed her dreams
    so i could dream

    broken english
    i think about the way my father
pulled the family out of poverty
    without knowing what a vowel was
    and my mother raised four children
    without being able to construct
a perfect sentence in english
    a discombobulated couple
    who landed in the new world with hopes
    that left the bitter taste of rejection in their mouths
    no family
    no friends
    just man and wife
    two university degrees that meant nothing
    one mother tongue that was broken now
    one swollen belly with a baby inside
    a father worrying about jobs and rent
    cause no matter what this baby was coming
    and they thought to themselves for a split second
    was it worth it to put all of our money
into the dream of a country
    that is swallowing us whole
    papa looks at his woman’s eyes
    and sees loneliness living where the iris was
    wants to give her a home in a country that looks at her
    with the word visitor wrapped around its tongue
    on their wedding day
    she left an entire village to be his wife
    now she left an entire country to be a warrior
    and when the winter came
    they had nothing but the heat of their own bodies
    to keep the coldness out
    like two brackets they faced