I am staining the custom sari when you open the bedroom door.
Grandfather, can you help me? I’m holding the bracelet too bright
to be heirloom and you say I will try but your cowrie-pale nails
are blunted and downstairs the suitors are wilting
under the plumeria—orifices sweating, lavender talcum crusting the pits
of their tuxedos, and all their scales are tipped both ways. I say
I cannot do this. You snap my child, this is the only way you live.

I snarl every evening until she died you made two cups of hibiscus tea
and drank yours alone while the other cup drowned
a thousand mosquitoes. You slap my mother’s jhumkas
right out of my ears. Their sunbursts rattle every tooth
in my head. You say take off your clothes.

I pull the zipper up your spine; the satin swallows your vertebrae
like tsunamis swallow Omura’s whales. I paint your face while you pinprick your feet.
A bride is not a bride if their soles do not bleed.

I claim your rainforest clothes, their pockets ripe with lizardskins,
their hems thick with mud. You finger the space
between waistband and hips and sigh I too was a young man once.
You unlock the almirah, unfurl the moth-eaten shalwars. Downstairs,
the conches blow and a dozen mouths swell with saliva.

Up here where all our family’s daughters keep dying,
heirloom gold cascades across the floor;
heat unspools in my belly like stringhopper dough.
Was this her dowry? Is this everything you could have given me?
You hook my mother’s jhumkas through your unpierced earlobes.
You tongue the rusting edge of your reflection.
You say it’s been a while since I took the stage.

Just before I lose my grip on the balcony rail
you grin gummily at me and vow I’ll tell them
I changed my mind about the veil.