Dear Oz,

With a 40 kilo limit
I entered cautiously,
this tilted love affair.
Breathed in free air
to be put in place –
……………………………….brown skin
……………………………….woman
……………………………….21

You gave me the bluest skies,
the sun on my bare skin,
No more moral policing.
You gave me the grayest blues,
isolation and bias drizzle on my skin,
A new self-policing.

Haunted by what I left,
I run into your open? arms
Do I crave more to leave behind,
or run toward and stay?
Yet, under these southern blue blue skies,
I found home for the first time,
I am for the first time,
I live, breathe and just be
everything I wanted to be –
f r e e

So, I’ll beg on my knees,
to stay another day,
to soothe your pains
and put out your fires,
deck your lanes
and colour your viles,
So someday, they’re mine too,
and someday I’ll be yours

With love,
an immigrant

**

Shyamal is a creative with a passion for playing with words, narratology, and postmodern writing. She is acutely sensitive to form and loves experimenting with concrete poetry. She has had several poems published in anthologies in Australia and the U.S. She is currently working on her debut novel.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents

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