I lay my head on my backpack, stretch my legs out, and snuggle into the concrete. The winds blow my hair into my face, and through the locks the moon shines like it is smiling. I smile back.

"See, this isn't so bad," I say to him, laying next to me. The Buddha, with closed eyes, replies, "Yeah, the moon is quite beautiful from down here."

I nod.

"I didn't think it would be so comfortable—the concrete I mean." I lace my fingers in his.

"I told you homeless life isn't so bad." And I laugh.

"If you're a monk, well yeah of course. You get fed, clothed, all that. Don't have to worry about EBT balances and wearing the same socks everyday."

We take in a deep breath. I clear my throat.

"Anyways, you wanna begin?" I ask.

He rises, crosses his legs. The crown of his hair eclipses the moon—smoky moonlight shines around him like a hazy memory.

He nods.

"Oh Noble One," he says, his eyes dark where the bordering moonlight doesn't reach, "Are you sure you wish to go through this?"

I remain silent until he asks a third time, at which I smile, hold his hand tighter.

"Then open your mouth," he says. He sticks a finger in. I inhale sharply.

He sticks another in, then a third. And then I smile, toothily—the pressure of it sinks into his fingers, but he doesn't seem to mind. He just smiles back.

And through each of his fingers, he teaches the interpretation of my stories, of my life that led to my sleeping in parking lots and gym locker rooms, eyes always high on mascara and eyeshadow, and I let him take control, with the faith that, yes, he will help me realize, for sure, that I am a girl.

—

Following the beginning of Ramadan a year ago, I was stretched across the world to the Punjab by the Girl of Waves.

My first day in the village, she held out her hand like a dakini, leading me up ancestral steps, and we pointed out the scintillation of the husks of grain as they peered over the dawn fog. The color, I said, was so princess-like, and that I would like to wear a flower like it in my hair. She smiled and said nothing, only let the sunrise shimmer her eyes the color of sunset bark.

During that time in the village, she would listen to me as I talked to her about what I was reading in ‘that literature book of yours.’ I told her the title in Urdu, and how ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ sounded so sweet in our language.

Later that afternoon, when José Arcadio Buendía, tied to his tree, burst into a shower of yellow petals, I closed the book, stepped into the conference of the birds that daily chorused in the tree in the courtyard, and to each direction, praised the human heart.

When she woke, I told her what Marquez taught me of the human heart, that it let colors and meanings live in places like this village, because it was just like Macondo, where the wind let white, pink, red, and yellow petals tussle through the air and our hair, in the beginnings of life and the marches of death. But she just looked off, her eyes still shining like a sunset.

Right before our child was born, she called me into the room once, and smirked as I brought her her daily dose of dirt. After the earth sprawled across her tongue, she pulled me in, palms breathing against my neck, and kissed me free.

The kiss shocked me, but I remembered I had to enjoy it, and I forgot all of the past, the beginnings, that we were wedded to cure me, make sure I didn't cross to the other side, scatter the bathroom with shaved beard and eyeshadow powders, scatter the world with a new, flowered name. In that kiss, there could only be waves with no words, waves that were fresh, like a river.

In Punjabi, her village means Of The Waves. And when I would walk with nieces and nephews through and past Of The Waves, they would scatter across the Chenab riverbed, dried but historical, like dandelions. And if you looked up, the Himalayas would stand hazed behind purple clouds. And through that violet hue—a color of an imagined flower in my hair—and the children holding my hands, waving around flowers and kites, I would swallow a dryness, because I knew they would never think of me as a mother to the child coming. Nor would the Girl of Waves. That in reality, like in the Chenab, all the waves were dried up, all the freshness gone.

Then I remembered a name or two. I traced them into the sand. A Girl of Softness, a Boy of Rain. Perhaps, if the river was dry, these names would never wash away. And so, next to them, I wrote my own, the real one, fresh like the waves.

—

He takes his first finger out of my mouth.

"You're shivering," he says, and he takes off his upper robe, wraps me up in it. It smells like acacia. Like his eyes, his body is a pit of darkness. I wonder what it means for a body to only be known by touch. So I trace my finger along his.

He nods. This response dries my throat.

"Let's continue," and he thrusts his finger deep. I choke, and my tears reach my temples.

I hold his free hand. I try to let him know, by touch, that I want him to stroke my tears.

But he just nods. I inhale.

—

Following the end of Christmas that same year, I was driven across the gulleys of Queens by a Boy of Rain.

One night, I told the fairies who roomed with him to leave us alone for the night. They left the car giggling, grazing my shoulder. I smiled, and for the first time, I did so in a way that knew my makeup was a sight, my femininity a necessity.

So when we were left alone, I asked him why he looked at me the way he did earlier when he had picked me up. Hours ago, when I had gotten in the car, I had asked if my makeup was any good. His eyes, then, stared at me like a farmer at a rain cloud. And he had smiled stupidly.

He looked down at my hand grazing his. The moon shone over him like cheap fluorescence through his car’s dirty windshield. His lips were chapped, dry, always and forever.

That's the one thing about you that hasn't changed, I said, the chapped lips. He laughed, then swallowed. A pause. What do you mean? he asked.

I answered with touch. I caressed his hair, stroked his budding beard, moustache. I held his neck in my hand like it was an offering of robes.

Finally, I spoke.

Back in Punjab, I said, after our son was born and I would stay up at night watching over him, I had contacted you. And you said you had finally started HRT, that you did it despite the possibility that it could kill you, make your tumors bloom. At that time, Ashura was in a few days, and when I marched later in its processions, I mentioned your name among my prayers for those who were willing to struggle, strive, and sacrifice for truth and beau—

And before I finished, he already began responding. I love you, he said through touch, through a kiss from his cracked lips.

Years before, we sat like this in my car, and holding his hands, I taught him how to efface our names and why our bodies were like the spring, an inevitably new bed of blooms. He smiled to the side, and I warmed his neck, splattered with hues of possible death, signs of a tumor, with my lips, chapped and dry but steeped in red lipstick. And it looked like a new bed of blooms covering the old.

That night, we bloomed together in his bed, and I told him, you know, I think this is me losing my virginity, and he said, like as a girl? Yes, and added, only that 'as a girl' means 'as me'. And he traced my chest, said, I'm glad I did it before, well...

I didn't respond. Just nodded. And as slumber gathered us up, swaddled, as twin kittens dozing off in the night, I realized that this is what a wave was, even if it was dried and chapped.

—

The Buddha takes out a second finger. Now I suck on only one, like a babe.

He raises his other hand, and wipes my tears.

"We're almost there," he says. I nod.

He takes his finger out, rubs my lips with its wetness. I smile. I giggle.

He nods, and thrusts it back into my mouth, so deep that it becomes impossible to breathe, and as I gag, the sky splits open, and a light brighter than any moon descends, and this light shakes her hair with her hand, puts on blue eyeliner, black lipstick, kisses my neck, splits my legs open.

In between, a lotus grows. She picks the petals up with her lips and plants them down my thighs with soft kisses, from which further lotuses grow, shuddering from my skin's depth to the pink, moonlit tip. And this nurturing of life makes me feel as if I may be a mother.

The light nods at this thought. I swallow. My throat is wet.

—

ONE GOOD NIGHT

I RAISED MY NEWBORN CHILD

THE BOY OF NIGHT

UP TO THE LAHORI MOON

AND THE DAKINIS

DESCENDED AND THEY TAUGHT

ME A MANTRA LIKE I WAS A GIRL

IN A FAIRYTALE

AND THAT I WOULD LEARN

SOMETHING TRUE

THAT CHILDREN WOULD HEAR

AND THEN SMILE

AND IT WENT LIKE THIS:

i am reciting the blooming of the blood of Hussain to my newborn child

i am reciting the genesis of sunset in Karbala to my newborn child

he stares with eyes gazing from a primordial

place from before he or i were born

and it makes me seem like an angel among

many and it seems the songs

of the Girl of Waves has moved his heart his pupils shine

but in deep i remember the Boy of Rain

and that i will not deny my child

the sweetness of waves

that

i cannot be father

only mother because my femininity is a necessity

so i tell my child hey i saw the himalayas

on the way to that wedding that bondage that false cure

and still i did not know why but it made me feel that all that has happened has been

contained within a single dot on the bottom of a letter

and i chuckle at the mysticism of my queerness that at the end

despite all the Buddhism

i sing him Shi'a songs

speak of Sufi metaphors

transfer the waves of the motherland

that the Girl of Waves and i share to him

and realize even if allah didn't think i could wear some lipstick

at least he gave me songs that a mother could sing

so i breathe easy remembering that yes allah did do me good

once i met him at a thrift store, watched my futility as i tried to fit into

a dress a crop top and he said, teary eyed,

“so you are exiled too” and kissed me in a fitting room,

but i know now that exiles are a necessity too,

so now,

i am reciting a mantra that has us born in lotuses to my newborn child

and i tell him

that he is born of my lotus, in the style of the himalayas, and that, at last,

i am his mother

—

Girl of softness, girl of softness; following the beginning of Vassa, I was painted into a world that had no name, no place, only concrete and moonlight, by a Girl of Softness.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; while I roamed the aimless roads of the Setauket, her stories protected me from the cold, draped me in softness.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; her stories spoke of bleeding, of dying and brittleness. She showed me the thousands of bruises on her legs, splattered like husks of possible death– and wow, how her legs were a bed of blooms– and how she braved the night.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; and in them, she chalised the names of the Boy of Night and the Girl of Waves. And I realized that even now, the Chenab had not washed away the Names.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; I taught her about the nature of the human heart. I taught her how all of us wandered alone through the night. She bejeweled her fingers and rounded her knuckles with silver; holding them up, they said, “Even alone, we shine brighter than the moon!”, and I knew, then, that I had met a bodhisattva from the mountains.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; tonight, under Algonquian winds, I speak of queerness, of color and our sparkling bleed. I show her the ten thousand ways of touch, of clawing at the shoulder, the worshipping sternum, the settled eyelid.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; and she blooms in her bed of blooms, and I splatter her neck with lotuses of possible life.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; once, she said that the world was as small as a mountain. And so now we board train after train, studying the peak of the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the cliff of the ear, the jagged rock of the shoulder blade.

Girl of softness, girl of softness; and the both of us, to all the knowing gazes of the myriad sentient beings in the trains of the world, teach the queerness that is Buddhahood with cracked lips, with bruises and the smooth knee, with waves-of-rivers lips, with sadness-shed hair.

And at the end of it all, the Buddha finally removes his fingers. As the sun rises, he begins to fade away.

But the Girl of Softness and I, we shine brighter than the sunlight.

We shine like Buddhas do.

"I wrote your name in Pakistan years ago," I tell her.

She just nods. And it is like a wave of samadhi washing over me.

—

One night, in this world with no name, no place, no bed, only concrete and moonlight, I looked at my painted nails and tilted my head. Somewhere across the world, two boys, two girls, they dipped them in ink and spread them across my face. And when I looked in the mirror under the humid moonlight, I saw this written all across:

AND FINALLY,

THE SUPREMELY AWAKENED

BUDDHA DECLARES

“I DECLARE YOU

A WOMAN!

HAHAHA! HEEHEEHEE!”