Dear Srimatiji
My heart aches
Reading the last chapter
of Dear Layla
You are Layla
Yet you’re as far away
For practical purposes
As the Gaza Strip
You are a psychiatrist
You are a resident
You are in Georgetown
You work too many hours
How shall we stick by each other
As long as we live in different cities?
Do you still
Give me your love
Eleven years later
Do you think of me
How we were in 2006
In Plainfield
How we were in 2011
On South Grand
How we might be this fall
in the nation’s capital
Will you summon me
As the young
So often summon the old
Will you flash me your fire
I saw it
When we first met
I put our first face to face
from SLU November 2004
in a chapter called
“The Next Step (Faces/3)”
“Her name was Tanya Chatterjee
Her face was fill of sri”
I may have a day
A week a month
A year or ten left
Same for you
Who can predict our span
No one, not even Avalokitesvara
I wrote a book
for you
I wrote a book
About you
But I must live out
The book’s imperatives
“Habibi, we have another day
Let’s not waste it”
So I resolve to resume
Pestering you
Starting
with this!
Writing you letters
Sending you postcards
Texting 21 syllables
Amazon-ing books
To your front door
That one year
You’ll have time
To read and savor
Or fling across the room
Your indignation triggered
Let the money remain unearned
Let the university stand
Mind not the cry of professional
Let the lawyers yammer on
You’ll say: “Come to DC
Join me in the protest
You remember the Gospel
according to Mev?”
And I will walk with you
To and in hell
So what, all the colliding coarse inner voices:
“Play it safe”
“Be reasonable”
“Think twice about it”
Your beloved sister may blurt out
“You’re so impulsive!!!!”
But yours is the impulse
Toward justice
The impulse
That Gandhi maximized along the lines
Let the poorest person you know
Be the God you worship
(Speaking of God
In our class 11 years ago
You told us—
You’re such a traditional Hindu mystic—
“I look at each of you
And see God”)
The last voice mail you left
Stirred me to the depths
You were closer to me then
Than my jugular vein
This long outpouring
In a summer writing class
15 minutes ago
Of re-membering you to me
All the love
You’ve directed to me
Startles me
Goosebumps me
Let us stick by each other
As long as we live
