सपना

/sapna/

My dreams, in colour. My skin drips

melanin and no one tells me I have a beautiful

name. I have no country of origin

and I cannot be accused

of being articulate.
याद

/yaad/

My childhood, remembered: mouths unsynced

with sound, words swollen and sworn. Throats

dismantled from the inside out. My tongue turned

plosive, poised at the tip of my teeth,

dubbing out of dialect.
सोच

/soch/

My brain humming as it searches the synapses,

the center—the superior, the inferior, the middle

temporal gyrus, the Broca’s and Wernicke’s

—for the path to my flimsy pidgin,

my language of thought.