Today's poem is by Aishvarya Arora

Immigrant React
       

A black mirror lake flakes gold in the light.
I listen for the breath of a far-off engine room.

How long before somewhere is your home?
My father reached America

long before he arrived. Each night he would wake

to find a toe gone numb, a finger shortened.
Some breath lifting fine hairs from the nape

of his neck, & something, almost, licking his
earlobe. The same breath lodged in his throat—

he could not eat without thinking of leaving.

What is more dangerous—a moving body
or the land it catapults into? When I left home, I let

the space behind me close rapidly,
not a wound,

but a winking eye shut—a round lump,
a clean seam.

Copyright © 2025 Aishvarya Arora All rights reserved
from wildness
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission