Descendants
LEELA SRINIVASAN
—for my nephew
The infant’s head is small like an ornament,
its perfect curve, the delicate glass of it,
unapologetic for the space it takes up
in the room. The hair is downy as a baby
rabbit, milk-soft, still but with a twitching below
the skin. The infant keens like a fish on a hook
let go by a benevolent man, a dimensional
saint, someone who remembered
just in time to be good.
Here within the border of clashing seas
we believe ourselves to be so rare. It’s nothing
new: the tightness in our chests, double
entendres, the curling of a city that swallowed
the sky. Nursery rhymes and lullabies. Those like
the infant know that heirlooms are the best
we can hope for. And the rest of us, then—do we
watch ourselves with longing, like children
on a screen, held fast by life’s terrible wings?
In this world we tend our scars like pets, wrap
old truths in yellowed maps. Nothing comes closer
to absolution. But the infant: the infant cries
and my throat collapses into ash. For here there
is still something soft to revere. There is still
time left in the world.
LEELA SRINIVASAN is an Indian-American poet and educator originally from the Jersey Shore. She received her BA in sociocultural psychology and MA in communication from Stanford University, then went on to receive her MFA in creative writing at UT Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. More recently, Leela completed an artist residency in Breckenridge, Colorado, then served with Social Capital Inc. (SCI) AmeriCorps as a Community Engagement Fellow in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
