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The Blessed Back when we belonged only to ourselves but didn’t know it, when dust coiled around our ankles with every step we took away from the front door, when our breath still smelled of raw milk, our ears hurt with stories slipped through the thin seam of our mothers’ mouths, tales that could char tongues to a black soot. Our mothers who were too scared to swim or curse or drive, bent us with their worry: half a world away, brides were lit like torches, thrown from kitchen • • •  • • • windows for their dowries— kerosene-soaked saris flared like a brilliant sore in the bleached sky. Their words bit away at us with their tea-stained teeth. Even in our innocent, American kitchens the steel-tipped stove stood bright, ominous— made us shudder like a broken wing. We were blessed— our fate consecrated by an unlit match, our minds, a pot boiling over with the salt and steam of all we couldn’t imagine. • • •  • • • ...

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