Kashmir

When the driver introduced us to the valley guards

as tourists from India,

my mother snapped rudely“I am Kashmiri, I grew up here”

Wagging her local tongue 

bobbing her foot-long wedding earrings

strung behind her neatly coiffed black and white bun

His disdainful eyes and curled lips

remained unbelieving.

Kashmir, the valley of almond blossoms,

houseboats cresting the lotus ridden Dal Lake

that opened up to chinar tree-lined roads,

A melting pot of bloody incursions 

by the Greeks, the Persians, the Central Asians, the British

had disinherited her children

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