to my mother, who never cried in room 207
After Ocean Vuong
By Aarushi Gupta
“i dread the red of your eyes like a / twenty-nine-year-old dreads his birthday.”
under a painting of indra (1) scorned, you make
your mandir (2) in the familiar dip of the mattress. soon,
the view will be replaced by the smiling portrait of
your mother, who lays in bed behind. the mattress will turn
white, for the only south indian snowstorm is the whirl
of dupattas (3) at funerals, icicles melting under the weight
of unshed tears. i dread the red of your eyes like a
a twenty-nine-year-old dreads his birthday. not black
remembering, but the pink of your unpolished nail
forgetting itself, pressing crescents into my arm. red,
commutative as death itself. if time is a mother, why
does it freeze in hospital rooms, where the umbilical cord
is forged again and again? locked in this furnace,
withstanding the heat of being ganesha (4) for once, you think
of the last time you prayed to god in this room. go
on, mother, pick up the phone and call. morph into parvati,
remember the time they churned my stomach, a
samudra manthana (5). painkiller amrut, splattered on the floor
outside our house. floating in that puddle, i saw
an eyelash, its shortness a gift you gave freely. yours or
mine? perhaps, neither. it belonged to nani (6) first,
but so did you. i wish i was there with you, wish i could feel
the cosmic pulling of draupadi’s saree (7) pause. i
wish i could tear a hole in it, sew an extra yard of cotton into
the dupatta of time. but if there’s one thing i learnt
the day you first walked into room 207, it’s that no one can hide
from a mother’s wrath.
(1) indra is the hindu god of rain, storms, thunder and lightning.
(2) mandir is hindi for temple.
(3) dupatta is an indian garment, similar to a shawl.
(4) ganesha is the son of goddess parvati in hindu mythology.
(5) samudra manthana refers to a myth wherein the gods churned the ocean to obtain the holy nectar called amrut.
(6) nani is hindi for grandmother.
(7) draupadi’s saree refers to a tale from the mahabharata wherein there was an attempt to humiliate draupadi by pulling off her saree. however, lord krishna intervened, making the saree infinitely long and preserving draupadi’s dignity.
About the Writer...
Aarushi Gupta (she/her) is a high school senior from Bangalore, India. You can find more of her work at www.aarushiwrites.com.
About the Artist...
Amrita Ketireddy is a junior at Creekside High School. She has done fine arts for nearly ten years alongside tennis. She is a member of numerous honor societies and clubs, though is an officer of her school's Creative Writing Club, Film Production Club, and FBLA. In the future, she hopes to study Software Engineering along with Fine Arts and follow her passion for creating things from the ground up.