‘My name’ and other poems

Anahita Sarabhai

My name

I want you to roll my name in your mouth
checking uncertainly where it fits
in the dark curvature of your cheek
hoping to find places it can begin
and places it can end
without dissolving into cavities
or burning your (soft) palate

I want you to take your time with it
try, forget, remember and try some more,
still unsure of how it got there or
how to offer its fleeting design
as you feel with your tongue its waves
tentative on its edges, speeding along its curves

I want you to struggle with its foreignness
I want your jaw to ache from it
your will to waver with fatigue and frustration
at the alien taste of your own mouth

 

(And when you kiss me that first time
my lips will teach yours the dance of it
the shapes and colours of it
the weight and rhythm of it
until you breathe it back into me
like it has always been yours to give)

Sleepless

I lie
In the centre where
Two gaddas touch
My spine lining the narrow breath
The discomfort is homely (here)
The hardened edges, stitched
Together tightly
In neat rows for structure
Serve better than my own
Misalignment.
So I aspire to rest
At the meeting
Where they are least dented
By bodies that sleep
That turn and adjust with ease
There is a hardness here
More dependable
For pain like mine
And the perpetual state
Of semi awake-ness
Is easier to bear

Home

is the skittish
red dot
of a laser pointer
and I
the cat

Tell me 

Where is your fear
Show me
Let me touch it
Reach into you
Slide my fingers
Around its corners
Until it is covered
In more me
Than you

Anahita Sarabhai (they/them) is a queer, disabled, performing artist, activist, writer, and educator based in Kathmandu, Nepal. They are currently the Co-Executive Director of FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund, prior to which they co-founded and ran QueerAbad in their hometown of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, NY, their poetry has been included in The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry From South Asia (2020, HarperCollins) as well as zines such as Carved Voices Magazine, Allies for An Uncertain Future, and Tilt: A QueerAbad Zine. They spend any free time they have dreaming up performance pieces, weaving together moments in words, catching some sun, chasing the moon, and coming up with creative ways to disrupt the oppressive systems of the world, while their cat naps on their lap.