by Arushee Bhoja

When tomorrow comes, she rubs her hands
in oil and parts my hair. Yesterday’s pain
blooms my scalp. I remember

the last warm night
on my grandparents’ terrace,
sunlight pouring

through a hole in the sky.
We pressed ourselves
against the waist-high walls.

In the garden below, open mouths
of clay pots begged for rain. The plants
swallowed hard

when the monsoon came,
and our first day back I couldn’t sleep,
our house still as the bed of a lake.

Now my mother holds me
on the floor,
plants oil in my roots.

I wish I could praise
my mother’s hands—

my grandmother’s hands,
which too knew a child, hair loose,
on cold ground, shocked

with pain. Blades of dark palms
flash in the heat. Hands reach to hair
to hands to mother to daughter to daughter

to child. Each night they sharpen
their bodies and brush off
the shards. She braids my hair,

softly now, a moonflower falling
asleep, hemmed between
morning and light.

Arushee Bhoja is a queer Indian-American poet from California. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Dialogist, Dishsoap Quarterly, BRAWL Lit, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and two cats, Frog and Toad. Find her on Instagram @arusheebhoja.