Independence Day – Tara Sahgal

You that I am when finally I sleep.

Where colors blur into a muddy brown

and almond eyes are star tingly blue.

You are my context, my only clue.

How do you deny me when I am you?

My tongue curls sounds that you have made.

My box is of stones that you have laid.

I love you and loathe you, my lost is yours,

Your home and mine are foreign shores,

Brown as a nut, and as bleached as afraid,

we are the monster that you have made,

Slowly, slowly the ignorant learn,

Look at us, look at us, we are a thing apart –

Like father like daughter, can’t finish what I start.

∼ Tara Sahgal