Kamini Masood
For years now you have held us, all of us huddled together in your ever growing palms
You have held us and we have jostled for space, knocking each other around and striking bruises into our flesh and yours
You have held us and we have built homes upon homes in the lines on your palms that are more our future than yours
You have smiled down at us as we, unbothered by difference, unfazed by change, strung lights from every patch of skin,
You have grown to hold and to love even more as we flew kites from the tips of your fingers, and built bridges from vein to vein
You held us firm all the way through,
Because we are your children.
We are the children who never missed a chance to dance in the monsoons, the same children who were swept away by floods
We are the children who planted flowers in every garden you grew for us, the same children who slept there when there was no other place to call home but you
And we are the same children, who did not see the black creep into your veins
Year after year, we did not see them slowly shroud your lights in black and in red
And when we saw, we did not stop it.
We did not stop them drilling holes into the spaces between your fingers
Pouring acid in the places we had once jostled for and slept in
They tore into your skin – bruised from trying to love and hold so much for so long
And we began to fall through.
Your palms, you see, are no longer growing,
They are shrinking.
Those of us who could find refuge in a half formed idea of what we believe in,
are clinging to every bit of skin we can find.
And the rest of us are torn from the homes they built, ripped limb from limb from every bridge
Now there are people falling through the bleeding holes, the rips, the torn open hollows of your once expansive palms
You have been brave, and suffered through it too long
But they are your children too.