Aashi Patel, poetry, 2023
In wealth, in health, in power and in grace,
These adornments of my womanhood worn and
worn,
Hold the hands of my first-born’s wife,
As they once sat on my unbroken skin
From the time my mother weighed her
inheritance
Against an engineer’s flower garland.
I loved it all too: the shine, the richness,
To see my existence decked with gold memories
Gilded with love.
I give her the best in bare motherhood,
Knowing she will give me richer beauty in
return:
A grandchild that polishes the wear
With a smile languorously cremated
With my mother.
**
With a smile languorously cremated
With the plainness of ordinary life,
She resurrects sweet visions of my youth.
What was given to me is mine for now,
Until I can bedeck her on the day
That I see her live the dreams I could not.
I see myself in her; she makes her way
Through a system designed to oppress her
And she shines brighter than all the jewelry
That I can ever bestow upon her.
I will see her wear the gold that had touched
My mother-in law’s sweat-lined wrinkles,
And my fingers fractured with all the work
That I have put in for the best of her.
**
I know she put in for the best of me,
Everything worth more than any jewelry.
All that keeps me from my freedom to be
Is this senescent weight that I carry.
I write and write, with weathering metal
On my hands, as they hold the heaviness
Of my engineering degree’s mettle,
Which, in my mother’s gold-inlaid illness
Holds on to the markers of womanhood.
Each ounce of gold: a story to inspire,
A gold refining furnace where she stood
The very grounds of sacrificial fire.
In wealth, in health, in power and in grace,
I hold what was lost in society’s face.