getting tall

Amma sent a TikTok link. My mother, sixty-three, filming herself reciting Kannadasan's poems in our kitchen. The video had three million views. "You're finally becoming something," she joked, but her eyes glistened with pride. I'd left Chennai twelve years ago, chasing Silicon Valley dreams. She'd stayed, tending our language like a garden. Now strangers across the diaspora were learning Tamil through her voice, her stories, her trembling hands holding yellowed poetry books. The platform paid her modestly. Nothing mattered. She was tall now, reaching across continents, pulling her scattered children home through words.