the things she carried (and how much they weigh)

by Uma Jagwani

1. My body has a shelf where all the memories of my dead aunt are stored.

2. The grief I felt about my aunt was the first time I had been introduced to grief of this kind.

3. My boyfriend lost his appendix and I asked if he missed it. He said sometimes.

4. I lost all my things in the fire of my house when I was four.

5. My body holds the fire of this night right underneath my ribs. My body holds the flames that surround me, as the memory lives in slow-motion, of my parents yelling at me to leave the house, and my only two thoughts were: which shoes do I wear and thus save? Will I ever be able to use a toilet if I leave?

6. My body holds a lot of shit.

7. When I light a candle, I study the flame.

8. Since the fire, I have grown into a woman. Girlhood ignited my dreams which I ignored as I erroneously believed The Fire was the last bad thing to happen to me.

9. I think that I am too emotional for my uncle, who is grieving. I can’t believe she’s gone and how unfair it is that my cousins don’t have a mother anymore.

10. Once, a high school classmate said, I used to be jealous of you, because you’re pretty and smart, but then I heard you had a hard life. My pain made her envy diminish.

11. I was attacking an easel with red paint to tell a story about all the girls I envy.

12. I used to envy my cousins for living in a large and cozy suburban New Jersey house. Whenever we visited from Maryland, I would envy their father who let them watch television and play Wii and Xbox. I envied them for never having to move in their lives.

13. My body is filled with envy.

14. When I was young, I used to think I was responsible for the fire because I watched too much television. My parents, once facetiously, in an attempt to get me to stop watching television, threatened me that watching too much television would overwork the wires, causing a spark. For years after the fire, I believed this.

15. When my parents divorced, and my family had suffered third-degree burns, I watched so much television. My father was not around not to tell me to. Mother was too self-absorbed to tell us to do anything else.

16. My father used to pay me to read. One dollar per book, doesn’t matter which book. And that’s the story of how I became an avid reader, not an entrepreneur.

17. When my aunt died on a friday, in New Jersey it rained for the whole weekend in Geneva, after a heat wave.

18. My aunt was as sensible and pragmatic in death as she was in life. opting to be cremated as it was cheaper and chose her burial dress well beforehand. I would be surprised if it wasn’t on sale.

19. When the house was burning down my father and mother had to be pragmatic: he saved the car keys and my mother saved my infant sister and we fled with the pink flowery sandals I opted to leave with.

20. My body carries the weight of being his daughter.

21. My body had the worst period pains imaginable. Each month on the first day since I was fourteen I would be in drastic pain all day vomiting and crying. This made me never want to give birth. I felt I was being punished for not having a child as a teenager.

22. My youngest cousin lost her mother at fourteen. Just days after she turned.

23. I carried within me, the character of Daughter, a role I took on rather than was natural.

24. My boyfriend's mother was only ever there for him when he had appendicitis. She took him to a hospital.

25. I would rather carry a world of books, poems and histories which I can inhabit the feeling of, or inhabit the purpose of.

26. When he was a teenager she left him alone in Manila to live in an apartment by himself while she went off to Geneva to “look for work.” after his father passed.

27. I carry my love for him everywhere.

28. My maternal grandfather texted me hoping I could give him his first great grandchild. I'm sure he didn’t think he would outlive my aunt, his son's wife.

29. I was the only child at my uncle and aunt's civil wedding in New Jersey.

30. I carry Ada Limon’s The Carrying whenever I travel, to remind myself of the ultimate burden–parenthood.

31. I am not a parent; I do not wish to become one. It seems cruel. It seems selfish.

32. I am supposed to love, I am supposed to love, I am supposed to

33. I don’t have the heart to text my grandfather. I won't give him his first great-grandchild.

34. How do you know you were meant to love other than every cell in your body telling you?

35. So much of life is inadvertent. What is deliberately held?

36. Of any given group, I am not the mother.

37. I am reaching the age my mother had me.

38. Love and beginnings come from insanity; which is to say, by the time you are an adult you are able to take off the glasses your parents gave you.

39. Do I carry my 756 Instagram followers wherever I go?

40. As soon as their mother died, my cousins posted it on their Instagram stories.

41. I have, on the internet, the premise which frames the possibility for any single click to change your life, your head space, state of mind, or opinion. That in itself is the reason to not have a child.

42. I am on anti-anxiety medication. For the trauma. There is a theory that says the first traumatic thing that happens to us is birth.

43. When you travel, you are conscious of how much your baggage weighs, lest you accept a dramatic surcharge.

Photo of Uma Jagwani

BIO: Uma Jagwani is an Indian-Filipino American poet. She received her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Brandeis University and currently teaches middle and high school English. Her poems can be read in Underblong (Pushcart-nominated,) Impossible Task, and elsewhere. Find her on X (@umajag) and at umajag.com