Poem by Gurnoor Powar
Art by Keeley Sieban
A little girl
Flying on her toes
Digging them into the soft wet dirt
As she spins
An anchor
So that she doesn’t fall
The anklets adorning her feet
Singing as they rub against her skin
Chafing the delicate bone
She allows the sun to shine
Through her yellow suit
Stitched with green detailing
That pierces her skin
Her chunni becomes a beacon
Propelling itself around and around
Her debased form
She spins faster than the speed of light
Her feet curling deep into the dirt
Rocks break through her skin
Dirt embeds itself into her nails
The wind screams in her ear
The anklets continue to sing
A song she cannot understand
That her mother used to clap to
Singing in a foreign language
A long time ago
These words encompassed the girl
Intimately touched her
Came to her as a long-lost lover would
Yet they are still unintelligible
Looking for a home in her
Dancing in the Western dirt
In an un-ancestral home
In a place that never feels like home
Where she’s been born
Foreign words speak of longing
Foreign words accuse her
Until the music stops
As she stands still
She feels her blood
Feeding into the land
From her feet
Planted and torn