INHERITANCE

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.