Sambandar

“As a child, Sambandar was left alone by his father at the temple water tank crying with hunger. His father returned to find the infant with milk running down his chin and playing with a golden cup. When his father asked him who had given him the milk, Sambandar pointed upward to an image of the goddess Uma (commonly known in northern India as Parvati) beside Shiva on the temple tower.” – Bhakti: Devotion, Bronzes, and the Poet-Saints Exhibit in the Asia Society

We are walking through the dirt and crowds. 

I cower from the bark of the street dogs,

and trip over crouched women and their wares,

desperate to keep my husband’s pace. 

I have been following them since his birth. 

My son’s cries would will me through

The space between us

When I would lose sight of them

My body as the current of breath

Across a cup of tea to cool it. 

The panic lifting in its billows

When I am close to them again. 

His sweet arms around my husband’s neck

reach for me, seeing me. 

Our son is hungry, find food for him. 

He heeds my words, without hearing them. 

He leaves him crying on the floor 

His delicate heels caking dust with each kick. 

He will not suckle, how can he?

I am not dry, I am not wet

I am the expanse between us. 

I place in his tiny grip a golden cup

It takes all of me to leave him

His mother as his shadow, all this time.