And all I see now
is my face through a curtain:
a pebbled pock-marked past,
its burning by-lanes,

and drop by drop,
like a leaking sewer,
his love, pungent,
corrosive, windblown.

And all I’ll see now
is my unborn child
learning the alphabet
and its vitriolic histories:

H for He, H for Hate,
H for Hijab, H for HCl,
and then the silent H –
H for Honour.

And if I could see now,
I’d tell you a love story –
of a genie in a bottle
of aqua regia, and

a kingdom where men
love with acid blisters
and write love’s
sour hagiography.

***

He always snips off ends. My tranquil ends,
fins deep asleep. Hair is frond. Hair is leech.
Hair is auction. Hair is lintel. Hair is traffic,
sigh, umbrella butt. Gaya, Kashi, Vrindavan.
Coconut-flesh scalps, a manifesto. “Boy’s cut.”

He always snips off ends. Antennae
of lust, tendrils of moist defeat. Hair is vial.
Lady Godiva. Hair is oyster, hiding nudity. Scissors
– suspicion’s toolkit. Sita, Vedavati. Sharpness
a male moral – “Haircut’s our last ahimsa art”.

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