There was no hesitation in her speech; she was confident and funny and childlike in the way she entertained herself with jokes. The second time he visited her, he asked, “Did you miss me?” It had been two days. “Yes,” she said, “did you miss me?” “Maybe…” he teased. She had put her hand on his knee then, they were sitting next to each other at her kitchen table, she touched him to show herself to him. And he took his hands in hers, had looked as if across a thousand miles into her nut-brown eyes. He told her how lovely her babies would be should she have any, he squeezed her strong body, admiring it, feeling its buoyancy and resilience.

He pointed out numerous details about her body and words, he asked her a second time questions whose answers he had forgotten since their first meeting. He spoke plainly about his younger age, five years apart from her. He could not be a boyfriend, he said. He told her before he had a chance to touch her, before he could fully ingest her. He made sure to mention it early. He leaned on her listening, shy to say that sex would not keep him near often. He could not be boyfriend.

He was a foot taller, a lanky skateboarder. The density of her muscular, feminine body was concentrated into only five feet and one inch of height. They discussed their varying styles of writing poetry and genres of dance they had studied. His dry sweetness was intoxicating, he could see that from her reactions, the hands caressing him, body pressing to his. For even as she remained cool, her temperature rose when he pulled her into his lap, his rough and calloused sailor’s hands covered in the raw coconut oil she had massaged into the fingers and palms, the cuticles and nails. Romance had come like a tsunami, there was no need to make love though desire was there. The mirroring had happened, and there was no pretending it hadn’t.

His straightforwardness had been oxygen to her after so many men who could not speak for themselves, had let affections and communications crumble just after the most passionate and promising beginnings.

He stopped calling, he was unprepared for all he had learned of Laksmi so quickly. He slowed his text messages because her words were too potent. She was commanding, her lust-inspiring figure, her ringlets of scarlet-black hair, her dancer’s posture, her swordlike intellect. How she ridiculed everything into the present moment, effortless, making herself laugh at all she said. She tried not to laugh at all her own jokes, she said, that would be bad onstage. She was always thinking about performance, talking about yoga. He wondered how flexible her legs were, how he could pry them apart into a lateral split. Yoga in bed, he could see her doing that. How would she be, naked and wet and held down by him, would she push back against his pressure and insist on her own pace, her style? Or submit? He imagined her under him, her hard brown legs pulling him into her, her long, square nails scraping him as she moved her hands from his neck to his legs, spelling her names on his skin.

When her texts came, he was usually at work or with friends, it had been a week since he’d seen her. It was clear she wanted more of him. He didn’t respond to her text, not with words. What stopped him was that she wanted him in return. Did she want too much?

He went to bed alone on his sailboat, reading her unanswered text messages and thinking of her pianist’s fingers with their long, square nails pushing the buttons on her phone. She wanted his response, wanted to hear his echo meet hers across the water of the bay between them, but she would receive none. Except the reverberations of his desire, silent in his own bed. He said her name a few times, he didn’t know her last name. Clutched at his own flesh in her absence, expressed only to himself what she would have liked to witness.

© 2012 Tahminah Zaman

nerve ends shred when
Mercury does this

when it works, the body
is a del
icate machine
each of its parts
movable, the fragile
mechanics operate
invisibly, robotic
unpredictable energies
heating water to
the temperature of
your name

and when he returns, I
will have much to say
all the knots to un
ravel pages of thought
repressed now by silence
and gesture, a shut
down of sound

© 2012 Tahminah Zaman

Sudden visions of engagement rings chained together in the shape of a noose. Leaving lives behind. Ten thousand years of externally controlled thoughts and decisions, hiding my revolutionary nature, expressing creativity within confines of marriage, motherhood. Forced subtlety, sublimation of passion into calm, accommodating delivery. Slavery of the body, soul negotiated then promised to another. Bengali woman, show yourself. Lower back pops as I type this; releasing sexual histories engraved with my name, old healing projects and emotional ties, the familiar desire to spend my years building against the crumbling structure of a broken man. When I finally choose a whole lover, I will have learned to revere life as well as death.

I slide back into old patterns, wanting control, wanting to own the one I will love, the ones I have loved. Paralyzed in the place between the programmed self and freedom. I still long to have changed, transformed into the robot that would have made it possible to continue with disturbed lovers. Indian woman. Indian woman. Indian woman. Why is self-destruction so easy? Lingering fear of being thieved, cheated, interfered with. Not just colonial disruptions of our narrative, but the original narrative — bones and joints turned arthritic, brittle and cracking in response to foreign influence. The body still believes in arranged marriage — love as mechanism following naturally from the promise and intent. Stabilizing with time, effort, force. My history lied to me: the one who loves me will never fear my absence, will never attach to me in order to avoid loss, will never press me into a wall demanding forever.

Indian woman. Indian woman. Brown daughter of genocide. Who are you beneath your fear? Your control? Your black and white, your learned habits? Can you love without chains, without promises? Does slavery always beget slavery?

Should I decide to die an ever unmarried woman? I am not yet 32; my body still belongs more to those around me than to myself. Some never fully claim their flesh as their own. If I had made my choice when I thought I knew what I wanted, if I chose now, I would change my mind soon enough; will divorce, certainly, if I marry before 33. My hunger for stability wanes, waxes alongside my evolving manner of living. Painful myth to release, that we are the same tomorrow, will without a doubt love the same lover next year. Even if I never free myself completely from my own falsehoods, I cannot imprison myself as before. Not without consenting to abandon my worship of an unchained existence.

© 2011 Tahminah Zaman

words jump from page to page like migrants attempting to find their place. the body is here, too, the whole body’s force, manipulating their song, fingers exchanging, transforming, sliding their currency of meaning. a wealth of music, extravagant choreographies of thought and sound. soundtrack of death and living.

the expression itself becomes the retreat, reclusion into the flesh; feeling the blood, the bones, the sinew and heat of pain, resistance, release, power. there is no one alongside me, i am not isolated. only an invisible film around me, penetrated by all i allow myself to experience. walls are unnecessary now, natural boundaries suffice to regulate everything necessary. food, water, speech, thought, breath.

as the cells rebuild themselves, sleep eludes me. when i dream i am announcing myself to the world as if my voice is only now being heard. surrounded by reflections of my inspiration, artists in celebration. and in the background, my two enraged, subdued sisters watching from a distance, their eleven children scattered into the joyous crowd.

two sisters my elder and estranged, the loss that made these creative works vital, grief that could not be expressed except in the abstract, explosions of syllables and rhythmic exaggeration. my words are not angry but punish with truth. by the time i am done talking we are alone together, the three of us, without the disguises, without the other people we use to draw distance between ourselves. the silence is louder than everything that came before.

identities strung together by genetics, blood tangling history’s limbs, birthdays and personalities repeat to incise the inherited fear of self we mirror in one another. circles of time go incomplete, spiraling into uncrackable codes, unreachable meaning.

put one foot ahead, turned out at the toe. fly.

© 2011 tahminah zaman

Arms and forces
held close
shield and rule
with chaos

outer shell
shed to receive
reveals blood’s wetness
fragile heartbeat
tireless ego

bone and tender
flesh, sweet tissue
behind skin walls
iron bars
brick
boulder
shoulders separate
to let enter, to be
defenseless unto love

© 2011 tahminah zaman

your walls and thresholds

are many

hand-carved, etched

with text

the color of bone.

i lay my offerings along the line

of your vision;

this love an extraordinary routine,

blessing the inches of

breathing space

within me.

i am possessed of the gaze

of the highest.

pulled to center

by the recitation

of your names.

mornings i sweep

earthen floors

to your praises.

altar of memory,

forget all my hardships

and internments,

return my displeas

ure and rage:

i am free

© 2009 tahminah zaman

i write a poem with

my hips

a calligraphy in flesh

movement of oriental script

circling cresting undulating

under your watching gaze

my torso becomes a hungry snake

my spine a pillar of fire

body a wand of desire

craving you

calling you with my rhythms

coins clang upon my belt

against eternal buzz of thighs

we hypnotize each other–

performer and watcher

the stage a glimmering sky

between us

© 2008 tahminah zaman