My Lord tips His head down toward a porcelain teacup,

held gently in even gentler hands.

The water not yet rippling with breath.

Eyes fixed over the rim on what remains.

Swaddled in a green sari, His youngest child

peers backward—left over her left shoulder.

She smiles at a face outside the frame,

a secret known only to herself.

My heart is a questioning thing.

If all six hands stretch forward, I wonder

if they’d touch. My brother kneels

before them both, eyes fastened on a wood slat floor,

one hand over his ribs, as if to shield

the air from leaping flames.

These three— my frozen family— live behind glass

between two bay windows in a room where I ponder death,

pinned every morning like a moth— not much struggle left.

My eyes linger on their faces each sunrise,

as if to partake in innocence,

in a pleasure they’ve somehow captured there:

mute— oblivious —

even to the possibility of an elsewhere.