Mayalu Press

I will be ready by the end of the month.

For now, I am getting my ducks in a row. Trying to decide what this year will mean. Already many terrible things have happened but if I set my intentions by the end of January, I will still have made it in time.

I felt good about this year at the turn of it, with unusual certainty. The last few hours of last year, an old family friend told my friend and I about life and painting and commitment and I felt like things were possible.

18 days in someone told me that we’re all cursed, shared the nightmarish month they’ve had, everyone nodding. Someone else says it’s the year of the snake – we’re shedding skin, it’s messy.

I tell them what my friend said about it being a Year One—new beginnings. They say yes, how painful. I am stressed that we understand this differently and worry about what’s coming. The snake had better hurry up and shed, someone said.

I remembered today that snake is not the year we are beginning but the year we are ending—horse is coming, on February 17th. That means we’re shedding the last of it. It also means I have until February 17th to prepare for the new year.

I know it’s silly to feel like anything will change in a new year or to be surprised when bad things happen in its first moments. I never thought that they wouldn’t happen. Maybe I am surprised how quickly other people give up on a year, or call it cursed. Maybe I just felt too rushed in the first week to set resolutions and don’t like stumbling into a new year half-dressed.

For someone who’s been having a hard time with hope lately, it’s strange to feel it most hearing my parents’ friends sing Auld Lang Syne. Nothing changes and the year gets started without me. But one night a year we all believe the same thing: things can be different. By the end of the month—or when horse takes over from snake, at the latest—I will be ready to make things better.

I am so annoyed and angry and exhausted with you all. I love you. Happy new year. Just let me finish putting my armour on.

–KMN

Let me put my arm around you

Soon it will be a new year in the old country.
Months after my neighbours bring down their
Reindeers from the roof where my kite is still stuck
between the chimney and a sandbag
too heavy now from dew and frost.

In the old country, Cimita polishes pictures
of Sauba and Kousin
But only the pictures where they’re smiling
as kids.
The more I’ve tried to be like one
The more like the other I’ve become instead.

Cimita only puts those pictures up when we know
No one will make it back home for the holiday
This spring.
I’ve tried to explain
To the neighbours that the kite means more

than a made thing bound by lokta and butcher’s twine.
In our calls, Cimita never admits it’s getting late
And there is work tomorrow
I hear the things she doesn’t say.
There is strength somewhere in withholding.
She waits for Kousin or Sauba to speak.
They don’t, but they still stay on the line.

I hear the horns over Bagmati blaring.
I wait for them to leave.
Cimita says this year she’ll have to waste
All the sesame, jaggery, molasses and just
Stay in bed and wait

until it’s a different day,
a different day, when we fly old kites
And I can feel the marks twine
left behind on the arm
you’ll bring around my waist.

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།

Kin burn like Kindling

I grew up playing in the ruins of a house

Bua failed to build again.

Its floor is red clay

the ceiling was a raft.

I remember drifting in Sali with him.

 My slipper, lost in the current

He swam after it and I stayed back.

The regret is still there.

The child who has only seen the ruins

cannot understand the child who 

burnt it down.

Kin burn like kindling

and Sali is always red in the aftermath

like the mark of a different god

singing his soot-stained face.

After October, tika will stain 

every other forehead

that stoops under what’s left 

of our doorway.

Their eyes will see

that the floor is red clay,

the ceiling was a raft

and somewhere in Sali drowns a slipper

under silhouettes of newspaper kites

made with his fading craft

that he still dreams at work

of bringing back.

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།

I Have Hurt So Many People in Quiet Ways

Yesterday I did a bad
thing due to a lapse
of goodness.
I am afraid I could be broken. Good people don’t hurt
people. My fault
lines could shift at any time
and strike-slip the quiet.

I’m never quiet.
I’m a bad
dog. Time
collapses
on every fault.
Silence hurts.

I have hurt
so many people in quiet
ways. My fault.
Maybe I’m a bad
boy. Running laps
to kill time.

Thank you, but you cannot fault
God, not this time,
for ruling a child Bad.
You do not understand how much I hurt
everyone always, every moment. Even in the quiet.

Every night I kneel in the laps
of angels and tell them my crimes. I relapse
into that old vault
of small sins. Disquiet
the settled dust, the memories that have already been given their time.
Every night I tell myself that if it hurts,
I could not, I could not, I could not be bad.

In my quiet shower, I scrub myself clean. I lapse
into good and bad, black and white, at fault
and out of time, I have hurt.

–KMN

faults / pressures

In school
they taught us
about tectonics and
even though I forgot most
things I never forgot about tectonics.
The way they push off each other, up,
mountain-building, or bury each other
into lava. In my eight-year-
old imagination, this
happens
all at once,
and still, I can’t imagine being
in contact for that long.
My mother
says that hugs need to            last      twenty
seconds to                   have their full effect.
When you hugged me
for a full twenty
seconds, I felt
like maybe I could
understand what kept
the tectonics together
for long enough
to change
the topography
of the earth.

— KMN

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།

Things change all the time

It’s dark and I’m on a plane and it’s cold outside, it’s fall, the last beautiful trees, but right now I can just see the notes of light from the buildings, and the blue-gray strands of the clouds, and the dark. And the music is the old music which has come around, and the new friendship is the old love which has come around. I’m thinking about the woman earlier and her perfect poem and head, and how well it works in the night. My other friend and the stupid fights and the stubborn fondness. Everyone we’ve met who we love now and who remind me who I can be. My perfect complicated parents who love so much with me. I’m thinking about the cold air which brought on the snow, which i heard of and didn’t catch, but the near snow and the last yellow leaves and the little irritations and the being home brought on this warm wind deep dark mood where I feel good and sad and loved and okay, really okay, happy during grief which I’m realizing is going to keep coming around from all directions, somehow I’ve managed to let the weather move through me every day, things change all the time, last week I was scared of my feelings, I was on the bus and I was dying, and today i am flying through the air, I am not afraid of anything, I want to squeeze the hands of my past and future best friend and listen to the new old music, and walk home in the snow-forbearing air and the streetlights and the fallen brown leaves which make me remember being young and home, and love myself and cry and snuggle into bed with extra blankets and dream of good things and I am not scared even if I get nightmares because everything changes, even the air, even the night, even the most certain feelings, even the trees.

– KMN

They were perfect.

They really were and I’m starting to think that is why I never pursued a life with them.
How do you tell someone that even after our hovel burned down, we kept a bit of the fire going to keep our fingers warm?
The houses of your neighbours, the lit doorways and porches still laughing as ours crackled in the moonlight.
Sanuma never asked for help. In the future there is a hospice bed with the hand rests removed, stowed under the covers like mango seeds in Terai’s prairie dunes.
In the past there is a latchkey kid learning to cook alone, feet firmly planted on a teal milk crate
Sanuma sorts medical bills in another room, amused.
How do you tell someone that you once put everything you owned in a milk crate, and still left room
for the last of the stones your hovel’s floor was built with, the surface dull and smooth with years of kitchen clogs and nursing shoes?
When Sanuma lit the fire for our final meal, the hearth and the red clay shone like they always had before.
But every meal is every meal only until there is no one left to share.
Fiddleheads curling inwards like little kids before it’s time to go home
Fiddleheads curling inwards like polymer papers turn to ash and the ash turns to snow.
How do you tell someone
what it means
when a body lies unflinching, only when it rains at night
How do you tell someone
what it means
to withhold
And still be wanted
what it means
To hide and still be seen?

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།

My friends are coming

I washed the sheets. I scrubbed the sink. I turned
on the heat
for the first time this season, cracked
a window to air out the hot dust.

I rolled out my back, snapped
my spine straight. I bullied
my jaw, moved it
up and down in my hand.

I practice what I will say. I read our
texts aloud. I laugh the way they make
me laugh. I warn them
about my small bed, my creaky voice.

Don’t worry about the quiet, I’ll say.
Don’t see the cobwebs. Give
me a second. I’ll be right with you.
Don’t mind the dust.

– KMN

In lieu of flowers, please send someone

—because I know how this kitchen sounds when our first sun golds come

So in lieu of flowers, please send someone.

Hold me still as the seasons change.

Keep me calm as our heirlooms age in your aiselu jars

From four summers ago.

I don’t have it in me to throw away what isn’t good anymore.

So I work for a better harvest instead,

line your crummy milk crates with fresh linen

And let the artisans fall into them

Knowing the cut worms will hollow them all soon enough.

I keep falling asleep on your spot thinking you’re keeping an eye on them.

So all of our sales are about to be undone,

I will not grieve what’s left after bugbites.

helpless as I have appeared these nights,

I want you to know I’m tired.

Everyone else is about to break new ground

I clear cutworms by myself.

Heartless as I have become

since autumn,

I don’t want to say

you’re right.

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།

It’s hope

last night when we walked up the hill
the ice smelled like rain

we wore our coats open
windless streetlights glowing

you held my arm to keep from slipping
I matched your steps

last night was missing something
because my breath hit no resistance

it was confusing for the air not to bite
to wade through the night with only

the weight of my head to worry about.
I had no name for it.

I lost the quote about change. I need
a new one.

– KMN

The heart says nothing for now.

Tired today,
but tomorrow I think I’ll cook for myself
and the day after that
for my family and friends
I often worry
if there is anything else I can do
relieved,
the heart says nothing
for now.

~ཨེ་ཀོ་རོ་ཀན་ཆ་ཏ་མང་།