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 Elephant God If I were a good Hindu, I would believe as my mother does—that ashes sprinkled in the Potomac River will somehow reach the Ganges—that my father, reborn, is somewhere in the world, someone else’s husband, father. Or maybe I have it all wrong and he is a daughter, not Indian or Hindu, just living in a cold city near a river that flows back upon itself. I am waiting for a sign, like you calling from Delhi to say the wooden elephants are drinking goat’s milk. All over the country, people spoon it into tusks and mouth.The milk’s slow trickle cracking thick skin, the wood brittle as teeth, blessed, ready to snap. And it’s something like religion—behind carved wood, ivory tusks, there is something drinking, someone listening to prayers with milk. I wait for the day a postcard left in my mailbox will say “Yes I am here, it is wonderful.” Every hang up on my answering machine is him calling over and over just for the need to say he is somewhere in the world. I will ask, “Is the river really that color of night?” and whisper words in my childhood tongue, something like Ram, Ram, something like make me holy. ...

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