POETRY
The Choli
On being in the presence of a woman
We lay close on a vibrant straw mat
(the centrepiece of your whirling living room).
You talk with me, your head nestled into my nape, and I focus on your rippling words.
You love me, you say, and I you.
The joy of it seeps down your flawless caramel cheekbones.
The worn wooden rafters see your sweetened tears (they see everything),
but I only feel them warm as they settle on my dirty T-shirt.
Your birthday is slipping away quietly now
as we mumble to one another about truth and love and the order of things.
We hold close our femininity,
letting it rest safely in our embrace
as the Earth carries on dying outside
(we all die, but is it an excuse for yesterday’s felled tree?).
We don’t talk now
about the times your uncle swooped down on you in private,
when the girls at boarding school broke your wings,
when your squawking mother beckoned you into her rattling cage
at family dinners
(her blind quest reduced you to how you looked in your choli,
and your arranged marriage prospects).
I hear your masterful line drawings, hundreds of them,
even though they’ve been quieted away in the shelving around us,
screaming to be seen.
But you keep them hidden
from the violent world that tried to take you.
