Appi’s Lullaby

Maybe don’t italicize every

word not in English, the poetry

editor wrote back last week. It

is othering, she said, and I’m sure

that wasn’t your intention, right?

Right? I sit down to sing. It may

be true. Does it matter how I write

it: Appi, Appi, Appi—Aapu, Aapa,

Didi—big sis, sibling-ma, mother-

in-waiting—but, but then again,

can Google Translate gurgle

what was smuggled across the

bunk beds that stormy night, when

I told you I had met Boogeyman last

Eid and you believed me without blink

-ing, like that is what you were born to do:

two years, eleven months, and a fortnight after me,

the same bloodied walls closing

in on your head and pushing you until you

cried, just like last afternoon when I held you like I

rarely do (points to the ghastliest creature in every encyclopedia): let me get

one of those scholarships and I will fly you

right out of here, yeah? And you cried even

harder. In our language, we don’t say, “I’ll miss you,” or, “Don’t go.”

Like you stopped calling me Appi at twelve and switched to “hey, you”

or “brown Rodrick Heffley.”

They will never know

this zubaan of ours,

so let me put it this way:

in every version of this story,

I will wipe your spilt cereal milk

off the floor before any grown-up

can scream.