‘Swimming Class’, ‘Muscle Memory’, ‘Socrates’, ‘Eventuality’ & ‘Sonography’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Swimming Class

A tangy taste in the green

water, frogs we caught in our

hands,

floating leaves the teacher would remove

with a net attached to a long pole.

(Our teachers never came into the water

and no one was ever saved from drowning.)

We plucked bright red berries

as we marched single file to the pool,

wondering if they were poisonous.

We walked according to our role numbers,

Ruchika Jhunjhunwala ahead of

me at number seventeen and

Payal Lakhani behind me at number twenty.

Most of the cool girls were at the end,

like Swarna Sinha and Zaharah Sherriff.

They were big and strong unlike the rest of us

who ran the gamut from skinny to fat.

In class, they seated us by height,

the short girls in the front

and the tall girls in the back.

Being skinny and tall, I went into the last row,

between cool girls who made fun of me.

But I fit in after a while.

I was an anomaly—loose-limbed and agile,

good at tennis but terrible at running,

good at floating on the water and dreaming

but terrible at diving, good at poetry

but terrible at remembering dates.

I heard that Lajja, a girl from my class

killed herself after a few years in college.

She’d been like me—loose-limbed and unpopular

but unlike me, she’d been good

at remembering things and taking tests.

When I floated on the water, she sank.

Muscle Memory

We lie on the divan, the drapes drawn.

I take off my dress and wear his singlet.

He shows off his prowess with the gymnastic rings

hanging from a bar, offers me slippers

to go to the bathroom where the floor is wet,

then makes black tea and asks me if it’s

good. I refuse to praise him for something so

simple.

Later, we lie on the ground, and he says,

I can’t move. Can you adjust around me like water?

I don’t want to be the one adjusting,

but my body contours around him on its own.

Socrates

As the frothy liquid comes out of

me, I capture every last drop.

I am in the line of thought—

a philosopher trained to question

why we think the things we think.

But in full view of the balcony,

I refuse to consider

the whys and wherefores of this action.

I study their eager faces looking at me,

wanting to know what happens next.

I can’t tell them the truth,

which is that their sordid lives go on.

I can’t tell them that it’s a joke in bad taste.

So I tell them it’s a tragedy and I will

die. I tell them a bald-faced lie.

Eventuality

when you get

to the end of an event,

when you realize that

what’s important to you

is not so important to the other,

when you get caught up

in otherness,

when you have been othered,

when you realize

you have given away

your whole “I.”

Sonography

At the radiology center, they bare my waist,

and put cold gel on an instrument

which is pressed all over my stomach.

In the dark, the technician doesn’t look at

me, only at the monitor. I sneak a peek, but

everything inside the body seems

featureless.

A wave of sound is released and echoes

back and forth among my organs

which are like hills and mountains around me.

In the valley, I lean up and shout

something, and the sound comes back in

my direction.

What did I shout? It wasn’t any language I know.

It came from the beginning of all language

when I was just an empty center, and the

sound wrapped itself around me like a

bandage.

The sound protected me from predators,

but now, it circles back to me and tells me I

am the only predator here. I am eating

myself.

Ruhi Jiwani's poetry has been published in The Eclectic Muse, The Binnacle, Off the Coast, Muse India, The Four Quarters Magazine, Femina, North Dakota Quarterly, Jubilat, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, New York Quarterly Magazine, and others. She has a Master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and is currently working on her first novel.