I originally wrote the poem for my mum a year ago for her birthday. For context, I began studying abroad at fourteen and the grief of not being with my mum was building up slowly over the years of long-distance. It was also shortly after I’d turned twenty-one, which made me reflect on the ways I was growing up to mimic her. The poem originated from my notes app with the line ‘I think of you more than I call you’ because I found that when I was sad, it was easier to not talk to her because it would mean having to confront these emotions. 

I found the best way to express these complex and entangled emotions was a poem. The title of the poem and its subject – the ‘yellow dupatta’ is a very vivid memory from my childhood; every time I would picture her, I would also picture the yellow dupatta. As for the sestina, it was because we had to write in form for our poetry class. Its repetitiveness captures the cyclical nature of going home and having to leave her repeatedly over the years. I took the first six lines of the original poem and worked on those, and I think I ended up with something that encapsulated my emotions much more fittingly. 

Your Yellow Dupatta, My Homesickness

by Ash Arya

7,000 kilometers away, somehow, somewhere

You are growing out of your features

And I am growing into mine, sticky heat

Time that stretches like your bright yellow dupatta

That I want to follow home, want to follow to your wood dresser

Orange-blossom perfume against my nose, pressing my toes into your too-big heels

And here I am, twenty-two, still forcing my feet into too-big heels

And my nose is still not yours, still distinct from you in your somewhere 

Mine is a journey skidding away from you like heels on wet-wood dresser

And your yellow dupatta, threading through the distance in our features

And the measure of my five-year old height, wrapped in your yellow dupatta

And orange-blossom perfume always lingering, like the warmth of sticky heat

I am a daughter in halves, leaving imprints in our hometown heat

And even 7,000 kilometers away, I am always tracing the outline of your heels

In every piece of clothing I own, I smell the orange-blossom of your dupatta

I think of you more than I call you because you are somehow, somewhere

And I am here, and if I hear your voice, if I see the smallness of your features

Through my phone-screen, like watching your reflection from your dresser

If I hear your voice, I shrink to the height of your too-small dresser

And here we are again, you are crying at the hospital, then at the airport, in sticky heat

You are making me chai with tulsi, and I am memorizing your features

Like I would memorize prayers, still hoping my feet into too-big heels

I am still 7,000 kilometers away, somehow, somewhere

And on the nights that I feel myself shrinking, I fall asleep in your yellow dupatta

And in the mornings, I smell orange-blossom, wrapped still in dupatta

I make chai without tulsi (with razor-sharp longing instead), I think of your dresser

I imagine you plaiting your hair the way you did mine, gently, somehow, somewhere

And I open the window to feel the cold against my skin instead of sticky heat,

I wish I could let you feel it all, cobblestones against your heels,

Instead, I imagine you searching for me in your own growing, changing features,

The way I search for you in everything, and I may not have your features,

But I do have your soft heart and it is so easy to reshape, to string up, like a dupatta

And here I am again, still hoping, still forcing my feet into too-big heels

And here I am, still mourning home, still cramming my heart into your wood dresser

And you are 7,000 kilometers away, making chai, waiting to hear my voice in the heat 

Knowing that I am growing into my features, somehow, somewhere .

Out of your dresser crawls my mourning heart, out in the sticky heat ,

My too-small heels tracing yours, arms waving in yellow dupatta,

And I am reaching home, somehow, somewhere, always home to your growing features.