It’s about love: how her fingers like magic wands turn
the mundane macaroni I bring from the dirtiest road
into a delicious, serene dish. It’s about dirt: how she
grimaces to stop the devil from entering her soul
if people put their dirty feet on her bed. How peace
and bliss even in the dirtiest city
is when every nook of her body smells of Lux.
And isn’t this cute: she can exist without herself,
but not without me. She can perish alone, but
not after me. Sometimes she takes the roughness
of my ears to be her lullaby. Sometimes she mistakes
me for her deaf grandmother and speaks loud and
I have to remind her that the ears and eyes of
her cruel mother-in-law grow on our walls.
That she doesn’t know what makes her beautiful
makes her more beautiful. And it’s about being oneself:
when we are out, she doesn’t drink much because
she cannot digest public toilets. While she has no
time for time she’s always ready to give herself to others
even though she ends up hurt many times. She hates
hospitals but is a great doctor. And how she believes
more in filmy failure than in real, successful adults.
I know she would lose her neck fighting for the mangalsutra
uniting us. Her secret mantras are to shield me
and pray for my lazy tongue. If our lucky bamboos
become yellow she takes the blame and is ready to
improve when I’m at fault. On the streets, I am
her crowd; it’s my duty not to crowd my heart.

To think that one day it will end and we might
never know each other again.

PRETTY THIEF AND LIVID BALLOONS
     There is honour among thieves. ― English Proverb

A torrid morning with an unseen cawing and the horn of a taxi.
And I watching.
A young woman on the other side,
her eyes like marbles of innocence.

She examines the red bougainvillea hanging over the wall.
The window of the owner is wide open.
She puts her basket down
and breaks a huge branch off as if it belongs to her.

“It’s mine!” she seems to say. “It’s mine! It’s mine!”
She doesn’t look at me,
and picking up her basket, she resumes her way.

The red balloons look suddenly pale,
while the branch looks so good in her hand.

I watch in amazement as she goes down the road
and another taxi horns
and the crow flies away.

Amit Parmessur, Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius