ISSUE: Summer 1999
We get measured and weighed in the spring
and once again in the fall.
But who knows why I am short?
All my energy goes running up and down the mountain:
strange mountains—you run up and up for a long time,
but on the map it looks only inches from school.
Mail takes a long time and it never comes,
but I am not long like that—
me on tiptoes passing the windowpane—
I am short and I wish for distance—
being taller and far from Delhi, and the sari
my mother wore before the judge in robes.
Good-bye, my dear. Good-bye Mother.
And it is never like that again, lustrous silk, shaking.
