When suddenly I longed for children
I wanted to go up to the women
who didn’t have them, and ask, what made you decide?
I wanted to remind myself of a conviction
surely held. A version of me was them,
laughing on hammocks at noon, waving at fresh
Italian hillocks, licking mozzarella. Did your husband
accompany you? I asked of an Indian woman
travelling the globe to visit her sister.
What I wanted to know was,
are you lonely? Do you have enough
family? Your parents, they grow older,
do they not? As do mine. No matter how much yoga
I make my Papa do, he’s on pills.
My mother is bloated. My sweet American boyfriend
wants to fill a house with footsteps.
They look like him – his babies. Spectacles
& soft feet. But they look like you too, my girlfriends
add, soft hands on my arm. Draped
on so many mothers’ breasts, kissed
by so many tongues, I craved
a mountain, wanted nothing to do with my aunts.
So many aunts. Not to mention
their families – their families’ extended
families’ families. R mausi with her armfuls
of tiffin, orange marmalade. K mausi with her books
& karaoke parties. T mausi’s silver
snails for your wrists. Chains of women practicing love
in ways I didn’t know I needed.
Then imagine us – me and my sweetheart
in some godforsaken suburb,
rolling our laundry into fancy machines,
babies crying in other rooms. So many rooms. Actual
basements. Fake grass on front lawns,
sports cars on pavements.
Let them have mausis. Let them have cousins.

Published May 11, 2025

Kuhu Joshi is the author of My Body Didn't Come Before Me (Speaking Tiger, 2023). Her work has been published in POETRY, Four Way Review, Best New Poets, Rattle, Memorious, SWWIM, and other literary magazines. She has received support from the Academy of American Poets, Napa Valley Writers Conference, and Vermont Studio Center. Her second collection was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Series and Texas Tech University Press's Walt McDonald Prize. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets on multiple occasions. She currently teaches creative writing and composition as an adjunct professor at Pace University and LaGuardia Community College. She is also a plant mom, abstract artist, and yogi. http://www.kuhujoshi.com

Madhurima Ganguly was born and raised in Indian, Kolkata 1983. She obtained her B.F.A (2007) and M.F.A (2009) from Rabindra Bharati University, India specializing in sculpture. In 2011, she moved to
the United States and since then has been showing her work in various prestigious shows around USA and in India. She had a solo show at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor, Michigan (2018). In the year 2019 and 2022, she had solo shows at River House Arts Gallery in Toledo, Ohio. She is a visual art practitioner and art educator. She is currently represented by River House Art Gallery, Toledo, Ohio and actively shows her works through New York Pen and Brush Gallery. www.madhurimaganguly.com