A Car and a Teacup
A sibling is a strange animal.
Enchanting and disconcerting.
The only object close
to the womb of a home.
Yet a far away archipelago
revealing their scattered parts
with time. My brother is
the keeper of all my secrets
and the lost librarian.
He is also my father’s pectorals
as I am my mother’s eyebrows.
He is the car
and I am the teacup.
I am the ring,
he the watch.
My fondest memory of my brother is
how I wanted a sister in his stead.
How I waited
with a bunch of bouquets
in my stomach
wishing for the gender
that will let me play with dolls.
How on seeing my disappointment,
the nurse had handed him
over to me. A puddle of flesh
plucked from my mother’s belly
which she never let me touch
for months without caution.
It quickly delighted me
to tap his long nails.
How his bones parachuted
into the shape of a toy
I never imagined possible.
How I was told
he was not a toy,
or a pillow
or a fancy.
How I had screamed and shouted
when he grew into himself.
How our only entertainment
was waging war
over the remote
and sometimes dignity.
How I sniffed
the burden of loving
family. From afar and without control.
How meaningless
it seems to confess
the easy feeling of love
yet urgent.
Mayookh Barua is a Los Angeles-based writer from Northeast India. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in USC’s Creative Writing and Literature Department. His work explores sexuality, art, mythology, education, and family through a queer South-Asian voice. A 2023 Roots.Wounds.Words fellow, his work appears or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Audacity by Roxane Gay, Litro Magazine, and elsewhere.
