Half a Life
by Sanjana Nair
And I have wondered at the making
of your parts—as if the eyes watching me
are from another time, worn old as the idea
of your body pressed to mine, like the botanist
who gathers leaves and petals to place,
to crush and preserve between yellowed pages
of Donne’s poems. I have worshipped you
and wondered at the pages and dirt
that stain your hands, drift into your nails.
Oh dear one, we are Frankensteined from old echoes of love
and warmth, of the woods we would have lived in, of the children
and bulbs we might have planted and grown, but did not.
About the Author
Some of Sanjana Nair’s work has previously appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Fence Magazine, Juxtaprose Magazine and Painted Bride Quarterly amongst others. She has performed original pieces of poetry and music with Composer’s Collaborative at Tribeca's Flea Theater and has contributed work to Emotive Fruition, a collaboration between poets and actors. An original member of the Asian poetry organization Kundiman, for whom she ran a reading series at Verlaine on the Lower East Side, she has also been a guest poet on National Public Radio's Sound Check. She is a full-time professor for English Department at City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.