Émigré by Jose Varghese

Émigré
~ © Jose Varghese

No one ever asks why your home
failed to contain you. They assume
you’ve just grown out of it. But
the signs are too clear now - you
lose the bliss of belonging anywhere
once home kicks you out.

But you smile, and never speak
of the swaying ways doors
locked you out, eyes showed you
the way away, mouths shut tight
in frowns, as you tread
indifference, to find a way out.

Only a guava tree in your courtyard
tried to stop you with a thud
of an over-ripe fruit falling down,
breaking open, its red flesh
a wound that would never heal.

But you couldn’t stop the words
that formed you, the thoughts that
made you grow - each, a leap of faith.
You heard footsteps in the dark
coming to hunt them down.

You went away, aimless,
escaped to endless wandering,
spent a lifetime
seeing guava in persimmon,
tasting the bliss of being nothing.

One day a pavement vendor,
the next an office clerk in stiff shirt,
and then, when you make the mark,
a character full of depth - someone
who could be played by Sydney Poitier,
or Denzel Washington; and then, a speck
of dirt in a street, a being of nothing.

They celebrate
your wronged, diminished life.
They envy the power of your scars,
long for your perpetual loneliness,
fight for the ground that
doesn’t exist beneath your feet.

('Luminous Echoes' anthology, Dublin: 2016)