my grandpa tells me stories of

the marble floors of our home–– a palace once in Pakistan

sangat celebrating Eid and Vaisakhi, both

people praying,

handstogether

                           or 

 a p a r t,

embodying the same Being

for safety and strength and continuity-of-love.

 

and then

the colonizer desecrating,

divi               ding

 

places of worship, now places of refuge

transiently

as blood stains the Scripts

of the same Being

now weeping over Its children.

 

today,

the fractured mud floors of a hut– a shelter in Punjab

two hal ves grieving, burying or cremating

                                    2

                               million,

and i of the 20 million remaining

yearn for my

home before 1947