Fight/Flight/Freeze/Thaw

another poem from the "trauma series"

pkh

  

fight

“stay and fight”

says krishna to arjuna

startling me out of dream into cool june morning

what kind of bloodless revolutionary am I?

I’m not a fighter I tell friends

but they just laugh

they recognize my karmic burden a mile away

even if I do not

how does the pacifist

confront the madman?

how does the satyagrahi resist spray painted toxic fumes

that twist her words into bludgeons?

we repaint the kitchen red over the slanderous yellow

put some resistance into the plaster

a circle of protection primed and sealed tight

flight

pack your toothbrush

3 pairs underwear

2 tshirts

and go

this flimsy summer dress

now always to hold the story

of the white man’s revenge

develop an allergic reaction to trauma

feel your chest tighten

sneeze four times in a row

as the whole body inflames into heightened immune response

choose the car not the bike

avoid street festivals

heart races when spotting a shaved head

or a black ford focus

come back a week later

chiming your way in to clear a path into the house

collect mail and phone messages

but leave quickly

forgetting what you came for

even now you can’t remember

the color of his deranged eyes

freeze

like the baby rabbit trying to cross locust street

the impala before the cheetah’s teeth plunge in

isaac on the stone slab before abraham

I prostrate myself

rounding my back to expose my kidneys

my polite neighbors are shocked

into impotent complicity

watching the drama unfold on a second floor balcony

starring three brown women and one screaming white man

I fall asleep at random moments

packing myself in ice

mid-sentence while teaching

I encase myself in a cool blue silence

i startle awake

to the sound of traffic or a pre-dawn robin

ready to fight or flee

where is the toothbrush my shoes my keys?

thaw

this time I give myself permission

to weep

no children or husband to put first

salty baptism in showers

in cars

between classes I teach

at dinner tables

and breakfast tables

I weep my way through songs

through prayers

I cry before strangers

I cry before civil servants behind glass shields

I cry naked like a newborn

or swaddled in bedclothes

I cry for omma and feel her presence near my right ovary

appa I call out and he appears under my shoulder blade

I cry in the presence of angels

the flutter of their wings creating an indoor draft

I cry in the arms of women who hold me as I held my slippery daughter at birth

or my deathbed mother in intensive care

I cry in the arms of my son

whose shoulders were so broad it took two extra pushes to urge them out

I cry as if my wealth is measured in tears

lavishly generously I weep

I cry as if I deserve to cry

for what woman does not?