When the bell rang,
we raced, out of breath,
to form straight lines --
stretching from the
shortest to the tallest.
Hastily we looked down
to see if our black shoes were shining
our gray skirts and white blouses ironed,
our blue ties straight,
and our nails clipped.
At just the right moment,
we folded our hands,
closed our eyes,
and said "The Lord's prayer."
As the morning sun shone on us
we also tried to ignore
the other soft sounds --
not wanting to believe that
some short ones had
found themselves
behind our growing backs.
Good Night
The bed is still
slightly warm.
Even the pillow guards enviously
the hollow where
just now your head
was lovingly cradled.
Ever since they told me
I've tried to be
gentle with you.
I've held the spoon
precisely against the
mouth of the bottle,
tilting it so that
the thick liquid flowed
without falling.
I have followed instructions
to the T and wondered:
how did they come to know
your heart so well?
Last night, too, I had
fluffed out the pillow
(much against its wishes)
and made sure that it was
comfortably underneath your head;
the quilts wrapped securely
around your shoulders --
just as I had once made sure
that my teddy bears and dolls
were warmly tucked in
on frosty winter evenings,
so that when sleep
rendered us unawake
they wouldn't be cold
in the dead of the night
when the Kingdom of Toys
came alive.
Infra-Red
They make rapid photocopies
of my body
while I stand inside the frame
pressing, by turn,
my stomach, back and sides
against the screen --
abdomen, spinal cord, ribs --
reduced to neat rectangles
of dark blue and deep black.
The doctor's fingers move on my wrist.
The stethoscope hovers around my chest.
In my room
with its Lysol-fresh smell
and crisp white bed
pink roses stand obediently
on the shuttered-window sill.
My breath,
circulated around the room
through a ceiling fan,
makes prescriptions flutter down
from the night table
and attach to the open caps
of half-empty bottles and sticky spoons
on the floor --
where,
amidst glinting labels
of drug companies,
X-rays wrapped in fluorescent yellow,
and the gurgle of water inside the humidifier,
I disappear in a puff of smoke.
Recess
We climbed eighteen steps
to a shiny tin slide,
raised our hands,
and waited for those behind
to push us down.
Trying to stuff yells and screams
back into our throats,
we slid down a mile of burning metal
to land in heaps on wet sand.
At the second gong
our High School teachers
pulled us along on invisible leashes,
and with index fingers
pointed out our places.
We sat erect,
tails stiffly parallel to the ground,
never knowing whose wet nose
would nudge us next.
Our ears were always raised
but the eyes sometimes drooped.
Though we were forever mute
like the low wall that ran around campus,
the buildings always spoke.
They threw words out high windows
like paper planes and crumpled balls
which collected in heaps at our feet --
down where we stood
like so many bits of slanted scrap metal --
absorbing and reflecting nothing.
"Catholic School" & "Goodnight" first appeared in the Indian
magazine, Femina, v.35:18 (1994). "Infra-Red" &
"Recess" also first appeared in Femina, v.37:19 (1996).
Poems © 1994 Dr. Soophia Ahmad, all rights reserved
