I’m sure you can imagine it: my mother
in the kitchen dancing to Burt Bacharach,

my mother, my mother.
My mother had the face of a child even though

she had never known childhood.
There was no mistaking that face of hers.

She wore it in the shopping malls
and the school districts. My mother at the stove.

In the driver’s seat. Within a guava tree.
Small hands on bark, soiled nails, russet, raw.

Sugar cane in her hands. Chewed at night
to ease the sting. In the water of her home.

Hip-deep in the flood. Sunset, on Vesey Street.
6pm, just one drink. Ossining, New York,

March 19, 1996. You must not draw on
your eyebrows or color your hair again. You

must read me this story. Mother, Mother,
I’m waiting for you in these grief-stricken pages.

Anika Agustin Malhotra (BC ‘24, she/her) is a Computer Science major; she listens to jazz; she is from the South.