April 18, 2025

I am only kind to my fatherin poems he will never read. I try to imagine him small the way my grandmother tells it: patient, deerlimbed, ponderingpolynomials. Wanting only a Toblerone bar for his birthdayto eat alone in his room away from the violence of explodingraindrops, pitiless Madras summer. I wonder if he is proudof…