Why Would I Want Daffodils When I Can Have Sunflowers?

What meaning do “dadfodils” hold for a Tamil girl

whose first association with flowers was ammama’s fingers

redolent with jasmine and white cotton thread?

I know the cheerful yellow of an entire field of sunflowers,

glowing, growing on a summer’s day, more than ten thousand

at a glance.

But the English textbooks are not interested in my experiences.

They want me to appreciate woods on snowy evenings when

all I’ve ever enjoyed is the warm red oxide terrace and ghost stories

in the moonlight.

There is injustice in a language that does not reform,

that does not re-form,

that just continues.

I tell my students the rain smells better as mannvasanai or mitti,

not petrichor.

That a river sounds like an angry family confronting

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