Somewhere in Northern MP, on a street where the pavement sweats
like skin, my brother is gone.

& my mother is drunk again.

She kneels by the garden & plants the same dead things over & over.
A matchstick, a chicken bone, the bracelet he made her in fourth grade.
Her nails are black crescents. She says, This is where boys go
when they run too far.

The night he didn’t come home, she kissed me on the head.
Said, You’re my only one now, but her lips tasted
like rot, & I knew she didn’t mean it.

The kitchen was full of knives.

The next morning, she braided her hair so tight,
her forehead gleamed like wet stone.

She spent hours by the roadside, pulling weeds, waiting
for a car that wouldn’t bring him back. I think she
wanted a new boy to bury, something fresh to grieve.

She said, Everything in this house smells like him
& set his sheets on fire.

I told her, Mom, you’re losing it.

She said, No, baby, I lost it the day you both were born

In the courtyard, I light the lamp.
Mother sits beside me, chanting his name—
but in pieces, breaking it open like a pomegranate.

When she’s done, she pours ghee into the flame.
I ask her if it hurts to pray for the same thing twice.
She says, Ask the river if it hates the monsoon.