Miracle and Mirage
share the same first breath.
Mother touches every word
as if it were a small animal
asks it to feel better, erases the wrong ones
because erasure is a kind of mercy.
She says wind-chimes made of stone slices
sing a hymn to saving.
In her room, failure does not bring despair
but is a kind cloud, drifting over caliche-hard ground.
She can see through souls—
some solid as gravel in suburbia.
Some bored
with their own heaviness.
Mother says, inside rain clouds
each drop falls from nowhere to somewhere.
She says rain falls because parents sing
with love to their children who talked back.
It is also why rain leaves marks on rocks
and patches in rooms where families hug.
Do you know why music from a sunbird’s throat
lingers on thorns?
The answer has two syllables
like the click of a cup, like ‘thank you’,
like the sound of mother starting her chores again,
humming something rounder than sorrow.
Vinita Agrawal is from Indore, India. She has authored seven books of poetry and edited two international anthologies on climate change. Her work is widely published and awarded.
