Cia Mangat

---

---

1996

after Yara Rodrigues Fowler

if you believe i saw your mother aged seventeen
rehearsing lines for a play in which she 
was playing her best friend’s husband in 
english with a beard and a shirt borrowed
from an uncle no necklaces resting behind the
buttoned collar yet you may well believe i saw
her two years later in the passenger seat of a boy
in her sociology class the taste of hot shame
in her mouth like sweaty palms holding steel
cutlery when her brother followed them on a
motorbike and told your grandmother not to let
her out like this – i know you think you saw your
mother holding a tray of orange juices and cokes
with the boxed tinkle of ice moving with every
step forwards into meeting her husband and
his parents for the first time but what if i told
you last night i went looking for some cousin’s
birthday and i found amongst sheet cakes 
and balloons a woman whose name everyone
uses to call after you and is not you but rather 
a paler skinned version smiling through shyness
and wearing some xeroxed version of your face?

---

---

---

---

CIA MANGAT studies English at university. She is a Foyle Young Poet, Barbican Young Poet alum, and editor of Zindabad Zine.