Grey water

My mother kneels over a dull moon of water
to wash her mother's feet
that carried her through childhood
through laughter, wet monsoon
and a kitchen smelling of cardamom

The skin is paper thin
peppered with veins

The grey in the water enters like smoke
it clouds with small abandonments
salt and skin

Your feet are so dirty ammi
she tells the dying woman
rubbing the heel
as if it was getting cold

She laughs and tells her daughter
when death comes close
we shed ourselves in skin
it goes back to its first language
small pieces of earth that we carry

My mother scrubs anyway
hoping to make her stay
with her love that has nowhere to go.

Outside, the earth waits
for her, her scattered pieces
to where she's already promised to be buried

And when she told me this story years later
I realized something simple
that the earth was only soil
till women taught it to hold life