homeland burning

my grandmother, the artist

i heard from someone that my grandmother liked to draw as a child

she would use her fingers to draw in the dirt 

or make abstract masterpieces out of stolen flour from her mother's kitchen 

my grandfather told me that she was caught drawing coconut trees in class one time

on the paper she should have been copying formulas on

she was punished 

and the drawings were burned 

as if she had done something indecent 

like perhaps, she had drawn the trees in cherry red bikinis sipping on margaritas 

she dreamt of traveling india on a train 

head against warm glass

the air thick with the smell of bittersweet things and ocean fragments 

with a notepad propped against knees, scabby from kneeling on hot stones to wash pans 

she was married at eighteen 

i heard from my grandmother that she never got the chance to pick up a pencil 

after that 

i wondered why, when i was a child and slept in her bed, she'd use her index finger 

to trace strange patterns and wonderful designs on the fabric of my back

dancing tigers, and flaming suns 

she draws a train somewhere in the mountains, on a snake-looking road 

with warm glass windows and vendors serving chai in the aisles 

there is a girl with scabby knees with hope in brown eyes, watching the trees roll by 

last year, my grandmother showed me how she made those flour masterpieces, 

kneeling out on the terrace in a peacock colored sari 

it made me want to cry 

how she could create the entire universe out of a handful of flour

we stared at it for hours 

somewhere in the distance, just a few inches beyond the reach of our fingertips, a train 

called out 

winding through the mountains 

on a snake-looking road.