Train to Agra

I want to reach you—in that city where the snowonly shimmers silverfor a few hours. It has takenseventeen years. This trip, these characters patternedin black ink, curves catching on the page like hinges,this weave of letters fraying like the lines on my palm,all broken paths. Outside, no snow. Just the slow pullof brown on the hills, umber dulling to a bruise until the cityis just a memory of stained teeth, the burn of white marbleto dusk, cows standing on the edges like a dustcloud gaining weightafter days of no rain. Asleepin the hot berth, my parents sway in a dance, the silencebroken by scrape of tin, hiss of tea, and underneath,the constant clatter of wheelsbeating steel tracks over and over:to the city of white marble, to the city of goats, tobaccofields, city of dead hands,a mantra of my grandmother's— her teeth eaten awayby betel leaves—the storyof how Shah Jahan had cut offall the workers' handsafter they built the Taj, so they could never build again. I dreamtof those hands for weeks before the trip, weeks even before Istepped off the plane, thousands of useless dead flowers dryingto sienna, silent in their fall. Every night, days before, I dreamtthose hands climbing over the iron gate of my grandparents' house, overgrate and spikes, some caughtin the groove between its sharpenedteeth, others biting where they pinched my skin.