Maya

 

Maya

Maya is walking through the city as if
she were raised in a home of earthen walls and thatch,
had never before seen car herds, nor the mean faced-
monument blinking wild red and green.
She has forgotten that she was born
in St John's Hospital, that her mother fled
to doctors in a white van, not stopping for lights.
"A part of me comes from a temple town
in south Karnataka, but I don't know which part
or where," she tells Dr Samuel, who nods,
notes the choking of words. "Like a jigsaw piece,"
he offers, kindly. In Keats, she finds all
the lengths of countryside she wants, unfurling yards of cloth.
This is mine, she says, holding her sari to her face.
When she gets like this, her husband lets her out
of the flat for air, so she can invent uneasy memories
on a park bench and watch the frightened dream
of people gutter out of neuron-networked streets.