Train to Agra

I want to reach you—
in that city where the snow

only shimmers silver
for a few hours. It has taken

seventeen years. This trip, 
these characters patterned

in black ink, curves catching 
on the page like hinges,

this weave of letters fraying 
like the lines on my palm,

all broken paths. Outside, 
no snow. Just the slow pull

of brown on the hills, umber 
dulling to a bruise until the city

is just a memory of stained teeth, 
the burn of white marble

to dusk, cows standing 
on the edges like a dust

cloud gaining weight
after days of no rain. Asleep

in the hot berth, my parents 
sway in a dance, the silence

broken by scrape of tin, hiss 
of tea, and underneath,

the constant clatter of wheels
beating steel tracks over and over:

to the city of white marble, 
to the city of goats, tobacco

fields, city of dead hands,
a mantra of my grandmother's—

her teeth eaten away
by betel leaves—the story

of how Shah Jahan had cut off
all the workers' hands

after they built the Taj, so they 
could never build again. I dreamt

of those hands for weeks before 
the trip, weeks even before I

stepped off the plane, thousands 
of useless dead flowers drying

to sienna, silent in their fall. 
Every night, days before, I dreamt

those hands climbing over the iron 
gate of my grandparents' house, over

grate and spikes, some caught
in the groove between its sharpened

teeth, others biting where 
they pinched my skin.