SHIVA'S SIX FACES LISTED BY HIS WIFE PARVATI
Reetika Vazirani

one face you undress me
one face you see the other
one face you remember former lovers
one face you enter me
one face you want 3 girls on you
one face you leave me 3 forevers
 

        eon age year you create to keep me waiting
        verse says I waited at the lighthouses of Hatteras
        verse says I grew my hair & waited
        verse says I waited tables for a song
        verse says I knitted a shroud by day
        could not vote or choose my body’s drama
        (I am waiting in a waiting room to see the lawyer who won’t
see me)
        verse says you wouldn’t even fuck me so singlehandedly
                I made my daughter rise out of mud
        had a headless son who had to wait till you crowned him
                an elephant!
        verse says I was not a single parent but I was
 

then I remember all 6 faces
especially the night you undressed me
had me
wrote a 100 verses to my eyelash holding the raindrop
which fell to my lower lip
rolled down my aam-ripe breasts
smarting with your nailmarks
down my 3 folds
deep into my navel where you looked
for my face
& found all sanskrit verse untucked there
love-in-enjoyment I had time & again
 

but not-with-you god not-with-you
when all along I’d never waited
I saw myself a hundred-thousand faces alertly facing
love in the wide world
_______________
aam (Hindi) -- mango