when you find a letter between the stomach folds

of the sofa, creased to shit, well-loved as Amma

often said, unyellowed by light, a crackled white

devotion plucked from the days when people still

wrote letters /

                    let's suppose you do what the plot

demands, you open the damn thing, crook of nail

gliding below the seam, finger grazing the cream

veneer, good paper, veined leaf, ink weeping out

the back like hi, miss me /

                                     and not that you don't

read it to begin with, there's a certain joy to this

stitch of anticipation, that breath before the call

to prayer, a blackout to applause, a finding that

finds you back /

                       one weekend your abbu packed

the car with everything but your bike, promising

it'd find you in Pakistan, where he told you a girl

cannot cycle in this country, that her faith gives

up at the sight of her joy /

                                     you had been written

like this, penned to be simple, kempt and God-

fearing, to imagine your luck, to scrawl it in the

margins, past the ringbind, past the gate to the

place you lived then buried it /

                                            there is a place

where you go when it all gets too loud, maybe

I'm there with you, maybe not, maybe morning

breaks in the way a car does and a father gets

out saying where is Sarah, where is she /

                                                         Mum–

where are we? where we unfold like letters, no

better than a father giving memory its flight, no

lighter than the moment you tore one future in-

to another /

                  it's a habit, history, even the river

remembers the grip of a flood, even our eyes

mourn the grass when it's cut to the corners,

even the books we shut, they open like birds,

and still we try to read them