I was naïve to fall in love with ‘absolutes.’

I should’ve known everything of beauty is flawed.

They did a favour they said.

By empowering me.

The penetrating facades of ‘wild and free’

An insipid flavour camouflaged ‘liberty.’

When all I did

Was to live by their choice.

The truth is dredged up

When you fight alligators of darkness.

Freedom is not delegated

It’s a loving connection that lets me be…

A thread is enough to cover my body.

Like a sentinel guarding its exclusivity.

A ‘ravening look’

Your ribald charm

Goes out cold unless

It drums up a gorgeous chaos in me.

Then you are invited to seal up my orifice

In your buttermilk.

A loving act defined by

The freedom of my choice.

Hoping for ‘absolutes’

Is like chasing a dream.

Searching for a ‘grotto of hope’ in a graveyard.

Don’t think my freedom is a boarding pass

To your delicious sense rolled flight.

Unless your soul rides my heart.

Till when you stay

Is a boundary defined by the freedom of my choice.

Please let it be that way.

Otherwise it’s quite a task

Clearing maggots of memory

And hiccups of times gone slippery.

I have learnt to trip the light fantastic.

I truly dance to my toes

When I ensure another’s freedom.

Being a woman it’s the most unsullied DNA thread

To be passed on to my child.

I mustn’t forget to tell the young life

Freedom hurts. At times freedom is fate.

At times it’s silence.

At times it’s a simple breath.

Child when you grow up you’ll do stupid jobs.

You’ll work extra hard. You’ll justify.

You’ll beg to get noticed.

However, your eyes will tell the story of the ripped stitch.

A punch of conscience will take you back to your mom’s classroom.

The learning of transference back in the womb.

Freedom is the tenth ripped stitch

That if sewed back on time … saves rest nine.

It’ll be the same story

In church, work, vacations, cruises, dates, Tinder, Ashley Madison sex inventory.

You’ll hope to be noticed. ‘Please accept me! I’m worth your approving gaze!’

On your eighteenth birthday your ‘ole mom’ will tell you a story.

You’ll look with piqued interest and I’ll proceed like a savant.

Don’t let life be a patchwork of piercing memories.

Forget the ‘absolutes’ in your personal diary.

They’ll never find place in the parchment page.

Ever be kind to yourself dear.

Let ‘em’ not fool you.

You can’t be an ‘absolute’ stunner.

An ‘absolute’ radiance, a diva in your summer gown

Dropping to the floor in rustling kisses.

You can’t be an ‘absolute’ feather quill Goddess

Writing Sufi poetry, reading the runes

Divining what it takes to make the perfect love story.

You can’t be an ‘absolute’ professional legacy.

Dressed sharp as a pin, tossing leather bound books, giving bright eyed commentaries.

An ‘absolute’ lover, an ‘absolute’ wife, an ‘absolute’ mother, an ‘absolute’…fairy

Befana, Rhiannon … have I missed yet other ‘absolute’ identity?

Fool yourself no more.

Like once your mother, this good ‘ole’ woman did.

You are not meant to be

Clones of ‘absolutes.’

These ‘absolutes’ poach your free spirit away.

Stitch your hurt in time to save nine.

Be a ‘pistol woman’

Guard your freedom.

I’ve never raised you to be a clone of ‘rectitudes.’

I’m here to remind you.

Only your freedom is ‘absolute.’

The kicking the vibrant.

The subtle the surreal.

The unique the universal.

And when I pass it to you like a tradition.

I expect you to live it like a boss, preserve it and pass it on to the

Seed of your womb.

In turn, don’t forget to tell my grandchild

Gram’s says, “Don’t fall in love with ‘absolutes.’

You’ll be flawed beyond repair.

Embrace your freedom.

All of life’s entitlement lies there.

Freedom becomes an ‘Act’

My prettiest pretty.

If you ensure another’s freedom

By passing on to them the freedom of choice.’

Road-confidence Around the Bend

This is a true account of how a ‘woman on the streets’ inspired me with self belief, passing it on across my ‘manicured lawns.’ I, a divorced woman, had reclaimed my life in many ways but couldn’t drive. Even the poles (North and South) could switch their places under massive geophysical changes but I would always be in the same position, dependant on others for a drive. All this remained unchanged till I met her…

Place – Bulandshahr Lesson Learnt – The Wheel to Change is Letting go of Fear

That was the first time I saw her. Hijab can be so beautiful! The face having it on looks so chaste yet powerful. She wasn’t a Muslim, but no less a ‘Mohtarma,’ a lady to be respected. She looked like an ‘Arab Nazneen’ (delicately pretty female) going about her day. Only she didn’t know she was building belief! A caramel coloured dupatta lined her head in two circular drapes. Reminding one of the gold rimmed circumference of a wedding ring, encasing a diamond solitaire. Beauty is unbridled when set in defining borders, I realized that day. Her face! So beautiful! Minus adornment!

She was on double duty.

1) Driving her husband’s electronic rickshaw.

2) Driving away the belief that she was ‘available.’

Her commuter was a woman with vermilion bleeding down a straight line, covered by the ‘Indian Umbrella’ for demure ladies (Sar ka Pallu). Inspired by this lady driver, the winds of wisdom fluttered a new WatsApp status across my mind. I took out my mobile to type- SELECTIVELY AVAILABLE! My belief got confirmed over the next few days. She seemed to tick mark only old couples, women and children in her passenger list. There were no concessions for the whistling wolves.

The ‘Keen Kumars’ on the lookout for fun rides and meaningless meanders in narrow streets, couldn’t take a chance on her.

I boarded her ‘Tiree’ (local language for E Rickshaw in Bulandshahr) one day. She was insightful and intuitive. I came to know a lot about her. Including the pride she took in her fully spread hair bandana.

Her pinned dupatta pinioned all evil intent. It had been a ritual for most cyan evenings and cobalt nights. She would flounce the dupatta and set free her locks to the arms that garlanded her. Those locks would not get exposed to the birds, bees or even trees during daytime. Two beings would then snake around each other in total surrender. Her husband’s puckered lips pressed to hers. Two raindrops wrapped up in a cloud of bliss, only two, sufficient to satiate the parched cosmos. She belonged to him and he, to her.

Nowadays she was building belief. Belief that she could jump the stone wall, climb the steep tower, in short do anything within sanctified limits called ‘modesty’ to keep the kitchen fires ablaze. Her household was in constant threat of being gutted with her husband admitted to a government hospital. He was lying ‘shoe horned’ between two rotting cots, in the cramped space of the floor of general ward. The culprit was LAL PARI. The wrecking bottle of desi sharaab (country liquor)! Coming back from a stud gathering in a happy mood, he had been struck by a speeding Bajaj Pulsar. Resting and healing, dying to stretch his injured leg firmly secured in compression wrap bandaging, he kept cursing himself. Enormous was his guilt realizing his wife was driving around the city, earning bread, leaving their two sons to her mother’s care.

I learnt that the resolute woman had trained herself on the e rickshaw controls, maneuvering confidently, in a single day. She had replaced her husband back to back on the friable roads, dusting her grubby face with the corners of her dupatta.

She was a mind architect. She did something to me eventually. I fetched the car keys from the wooden key holder and called up Montu Bhaiya, the local cabbie who drove school and office wagons. After thirteen years rubber was meeting the asphalt road. I steadied my grip on the steering wheel, Montu Bhaiya by my side.

I smiled as I remembered the beautiful poem by Suryakant Tripathi Nirala

‘ Woh todti paththar, dekha meine usey Allahabad ke path par.’

I saw her cutting stones in one of Allahabad’s paths.

Today I would rephrase it this way.

‘Bulandshahr ki bheed mei ghiri, woh akeli aurat chalati apne pati ki Tiree(e rickshaw).’

Surrounded by the crowds of Bulandshahr, she was the only woman to drive her husband’s e rickshaw. She melted the fear that had paralyzed my mind thirteen years back. As a gazeted officer in the Indian Armed Forces, I had been driven around most of the time by MTD’s (Mechanical Transport Drivers for official long distance duty). Other times, I was happy driving my ‘two wheeler’ to the SLS (Station Logistics Section the workplace). Let’s fast forward to a few years. It could have been a fateful day for my trainer driver and I, the day we met with a wheel separation accident. I was just beginning to learn car driving. A tyre had come off the lug nuts, flying sideways, bouncing our Indica to a shocking halt against a tree. Nursing a shoulder injury I had decided not to be at the wheel anymore. ‘Not anymore’ no more! She had broken the chain links fencing my mind. In a week’s time I was driving confidently without Montu Bhaiya.

She had learnt it in a day whereas I took a week!

And then one day a huge surprise, or was it an optical illusion? Wasn’t that her in the construction site of stucco homes?! Her head covered as usual, employed as an unskilled labourer loading and unloading material. I noticed her chapped thin skin and ‘observed some more.’ The silver fox (handsome grey haired) property owner eying her! Damn! The dirty bedroom eyes feasting on her blameless face! Nada! Nothing doing! She wasn’t going to be a part of construction solutions anymore, I decided.

That evening I drove to her place, Sufi music playing on FM…Faya Kun Faya Kun, movie Rockstar. She met me with her signature smile. The good news was that her husband would be discharged in a fortnight, the bad – the e rickshaw had been reduced to a non performing asset. Someone had sneaked into the verandah of her dwelling place and stolen the e rickshaw battery. Luck had surely gone sour with her carelessly leaving behind the key bunch, inserted into start position in the hole.

Clearing my throat I informed her that I would help her in buying new ‘e ride batteries’ and a safety mechanism, equivalent to the gear shift lock of a car. I wrote a cheque and handed it to her.

She beamed in delight. “You mean I won’t have to go to the construction site anymore?” She continued, “You are so kind madam, how can I repay you?”

“Uhh! Oh!” I managed to say, “Nothing! Once a while just come over to chop veggies and dust the house, while your husband is away at work.”

“Surely Madamejee! You are asking for too less.”

“Don’t bother! I waved my hand and left.”

She would never know what she had done to me. This above board woman with immense self belief!

We keep overlooking the tell-tale signs for long, side-stepping the sign board by the mile-marker that says, ‘The Road’s Under Repair.’ It gives us a fierce sense of salvation to walk down the impossible path. A warrior’s cloak and mantle is forever propped up with fugacious braces and straps that we keep fitting ourselves into, in life’s trial room. All in a suppressed mental frame! For armour there is a ‘trained’ mind sharp as a steel trap. Endurance lessons know no speed-breakers to those who have known a less than kind destiny.

’We become self-conscripted warriors in battles of emotions that bleed.

Hearts roll over stones. Minds avoid marshy peat bogs. Bodies travel the length of packed turf, knowing no rest.’

Why do we need validation from ‘exes’, friends, middle aged tropes, pointy hair bosses managing by slogan, confederates, syndicates at the office and more?

The list of ‘shockers and displacements’ that qualify us towards ‘sob fest’ kings or queens are endless. Divorced mothers after decades of ‘happy show,’ single nurturers trying to blow the competition out of the water, believing their mother’s milk had to be regenerative to the superlatives. Men trying to corral their energy as hunters, ribald leaders of a pack! See humans running rat marathons to prove their fidelity, virility or fertility. You find people pounding away at the gavel to buy your happiness. Gone is your primal bliss, like an extinct species.

If you’re lucky you manage the secret stipulation in the will. It hits almost mid life to realize ‘You’ve been the statue; pigeons have pooped upon at their convenience.’ Biggest lesson! Be the free pigeon instead. For God’s sake don’t be the dumb statue standing impenetrable, unfeeling and unmoved; rooted to a random observer’s shame, being forever splattered with bird shit.

’Let me be around me for heart of hearts I am my own baby. This baby lives the singing meadows, bursting streams, wailing rains, howling winds of the seven stages in the womb of nature’s timeline. Certainly outdoes the nine months of a secure female womb. Lying stripped, unsheltered, unveiled to the elements of the world. Marching on to a blessed disruption and unrest!

Statues take shit because statues don’t validate. Validate you must, your existence to yourself! Flail a sword; protect the unimpeachable child that seeks refuge in the world of wide hope inside. Your job is to build a strong ramp, a great stair rail that offers solid asphalt to that child to take on wheels in the tracks for life. The race begins with you, ends in you. You are the effort, endeavour and the prize. Masonry doesn’t need a genetic lottery! Go man! Pick up the tools clothed in your father’s flesh! Take a dip in the spring of your mother’s love. They gave you the ticket to a winning lottery. There are no battlegrounds. You are no statue. ‘Love Yourself, Manage Yourself’ and be free. May all illusions rest!

The Twin Brother Glitch

Symmetry intimidates! World is dusted with the belief that arriving with your parallel is a ‘leisure package.’ One plus one equates twins. Killing sameness! Let me interpolate. Being a twin is a twistful of wistfuls. Fall in love with the same woman! Splintering steep incline of misery! You suck barmpot, my twin for throwing a challenge to your bifold, your blood brother. Kicked in the guts! Can’t even wish you upon a snake pit! Love infinite for you, for her. But Cupid’s ribbons and bows never find set rules.

We’d grown up on those hour glass measuring sermons in churches. Full of unchipped beauty! Two glass bulbs blowing our minds out with their uniformity of proportions. ‘Only that’ we realized, the sand timers work on one principle. The granular trickling down of sand releases content in one, emptying the other.

My twin brother! Lift the curtains to your ears. Twin gene is a language. It speaks in hunches, hugs and ‘Hi Fives!’ It stops a fight in its tracks, knowing the bond all through the curling comfort of a mother’s womb. Without each other our world is as blank as a desert full of rude snakes.

He’d been my puny jade eyed kindergarten classmate. Today he coasts on his charm and boasts a flourishing career in movies you’d call salacious, carrying off his smutty roles with panache. Has an endearing resemblance to Robb Stark in the Game of Thrones TV series. Once gangly, bespectacled and packed on a thousand pound gorilla fat, this guy is heartbreakingly handsome now with fitness training.

Karma can be a bitch.

I’ll call my friend A. In the throwback years, he’d rented a cinema hall for a private screening of his first risqué role in ‘The Hot Toffee.’ Close friends, patrons and media were invited. A was to be shown in several sexually explicit acts with his scorching onscreen mate. Shall I call her B? A’s ‘wifey’ was to see the primal skin connect right there with A and B seated on either side of her.

Onscreen B was declaring theatrically,” It is at the edge of a petal love waits.” The crimson furls of a rose stretched out invitingly, fertile, available and desirable, a matching spectrum to her evening gown, a riot of russet and gold. Meanwhile A’s wife sat with deep poise. Her rhinestone earrings nodding away to the see saw of her head movements. A’s wife, a ‘Vicerene’ with her own brand of pizzazz! Her smile couldn’t betray the wounded eyes.

Forwarding the reel! B sipped out of her Grey Goose Flute Champagne glass, in a sassy style. A was swishing the Pinot Noir, forming puddles with matchless rhythm. And then he disrobed her! Humping! Pumping!

I saw A’s wife battle timeless emotions. Her heart on fire, not to be gutted by all domestic fire tenders.

Later A addressed the media mandarins. The press asked A’s wife her reaction to her husband’s ‘Adam’s tool enters Eve’s cave’ scenes. She dismissed it by the clichéd ‘I support my husband’s professional demands’ kinda statements.

“Don’t need to peal my soul like the skin of an orange. My heart is dancing on a naked sword and I’m enjoying the bloody taste.” This statement by A made headlines. The movie a blockbuster! “What spurred you to take on this role?”

A’s answer, “Credit my ‘wifey’! Last year I was dropping a pregnant fan home from my ‘clean movie’ shooting set. Must have been Freud’s crank cousin! Accused me of being the father of her kid!!! I bribed the posse and her family to hush the matter. Had medical exam aft baby got delivered. Turns out I can’t ever be a father, reports say. Later she said she’s a psychology student wanting to study the effect of shocking a star.” A continued, “Then all along who’s been the father/fathers of the two kids I’ve given my surname to?”

“At least my movie role cheating is legal!”

Media clapped! A got divorced. Got married to ‘C’ the next heroine of the flicks he featured in to legally cheat, bagging a million dollar contract with a production house ‘SKINNOCENCE!’

Watch Out Boss!

Ouch! You douche! Respectfully, I’m your Secretary.

You recipe for delight! The office arm candy, I’m not meant to be.

Boss! I heard you the other day as you spoke to your friend, without betraying dismay.

Alas! You confessed! I ‘suck’ each morning walking to your chamber carrying the mail tray.

You office wolf, your hushed tones spilled zest.

The ‘luscious girls on payroll’ don’t give your heart enough rest.

So boss, does it give you a sense of entitlement? To make an old secretary like me an object of constant embarrassment!

You go onto say- ‘A stinking shoe-rack would be better than my butt crack.’

I do your data-base, late evenings I number crunch at the spread sheets.

I handle your social media, not to forget those on target missile tweets.

I pitch in brilliant ideas worthy of being featured in Harward Business Review Case Studies.

Yet, all I get from you are a buffet of face palm moments and a ‘burning as hot needle’ tongue showering critique.

Feel like replacing me with a sex bomb secretary,

in closer proximity to your ‘skin and meat’ territory!

But you ‘ain’t’ a silver fox yourself gentleman.

With your corseted shape-wear and girdle you’re no better than a slowly whirring, broken ceiling fan.

Look at your beer belly like a jar full of life expired jelly.

‘Good Morning Boss! What do you want me to do?’

Standing by the paper shredder, you look constipated, go visit the loo.

You hand me a stack of papers, grimly you say,

‘With ‘Cherrytree’ Furniture Company you’ve had a harrowing day.’

You paid $100000 and the company, now bankrupt, embezzled you.

Furniture’s not been delivered and your wife would have ‘them’ sued.

You tell me to help you with the machine.

Commanding me to plug in, press the power button, I wonder what’s so special about this job so routine.

In go the crisp sheets, I remove the paper clips.

The shredder blades hungrily devour them like a crocodile’s open lips.

You’ve not paid with a credit card, so the charges you can’t dispute.

You want a ‘PHOTOCOPY’ of the only set of papers given by ‘scamsters,’

your proof against loot.

OH MY GOD! The bundled up sheet was ‘furniture receipts,’

You never told me you wanted a photocopy of Cherrytree’s ‘buy and sell’ deed.

What’s happened to your common sense, O God?! You’ve sold it off for five pence.

You don’t know the difference between a photo copy machine and a paper shredder!!!

Your face is turning by the minute, redder and redder.

All you needed you fool, was a photo copy.

Too late to ‘un-slot’ the paper, the machine has chewed it up like delicious toffee.

Only copy of your document, now in the waste paper bin!

It’s like gifting to your enemy, the box containing your favourite tiffin.

Ha! Hire an Attorney in a local court,

Reverse your damages with ‘Cherrytree,’ he’ll charge $500 per day, for his reports.

CHOOSING ONE OVER THE OTHER

Huzza! I’m out. I’ll be fine you zooterkins. Rejected by you, the ‘illuminati tribe’ of social media, I still walk proud though you make me feel like your latest fopdoodle. Thwack! You wallop me with your critique! You troll me. I’m deleting my account from your social online ‘friend-web.’ My cardinal sin is ‘resistance.’ I beg your forgiveness, dear armchair patriots.

Heroes are heroes anyway! You want me to join your league? I shall qualify as a nation loyalist only if I wear a ‘TEE SHIRT’ of my country’s martyr and withhold patronage to the ‘global insignia’ of another country’s revolutionary. They are neither apples nor oranges. Heroes anytime anywhere don’t need crutches. Dear ‘screen revolutionaries’ your mental hacks on skewed patriotism don’t work. Reject me! Reject Democracy!

I could never choose one over the other. If I had a photo gallery of heroes, I don’t know whose ivory photo frame would find more space, whose portrait would be garlanded with a fuller bunch of roses?

One’s visage had always held me captive. The other had a power packed ‘electric’ persona to become the second sun. Both sent me on an emotional drill. Both were like glow worms illuminating dark corners. Both gave me a reason to dream beyond my comforts and live for something bigger. I genuflect to the memory of both ‘revolutionary souls’ Ernesto Che Guevara and Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. The former was a great figure of the Cuban Revolution and the latter executed at age 23 remains a ‘folk hero’ of Indian hearts ‘lionized’ in history, art and literature as a socialist revolutionary.

No moral compass could ever tell me who’s mine and who’s not. One from my land and the other executed by members of the Bolivian army on another side of the Atlas. It wasn’t in my geometry to pin one down with a compass needle while forming a halo or a ‘homage paying circle’ around the other. 

 Your media post was ludicrous. You were training me to be Swadeshi (for the country) on new lines. You wanted me to ‘LIKE’ and comment on the group update. It was a picture ‘FLASHING A RED TICK MARK AS APPROVAL’ on a tee shirt with Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh’s face and a ‘RUDE BIG BLACK CROSS’ on the second tee, a ‘NO NO’ on Guevara’s pixilated image. Poor Guevara! You make it sound like he’s been the worst abuser of your human rights. He lived for the man on the street.  Immeasurable is my chalice of respect  for Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh. I try to resist and there’s a string of comments against me (like disapproving grandparents rethinking their will). For a tee, seriously!

You ostracize me! I’m no longer a part of your ‘Smartphone’ community. They are heroes not terrorists! 

Guevara’s iconic photograph taken by Alberto Korda seems to smile at me. As for my homeland hero Shaheed(Martyr) Bhagat Singh, I hold him tight in an ancient sepia photograph pressed to my heart. 

Circa 06.06.66. There’s a warm mist coating the pellucid bathroom mirror. Jimjams and cold-creeps woven into a gossamer epiphany! The frissons on my otherwise normal tracks for life! I sneeze to a rare tingling sensation up my nasal canal. A scene unfolds. A swift segue to a rundown theme park spinning on decaying ferrous wheels. No! The Columbus no longer appears to be a fun-buzzing ‘swing to amusement’ ride. Like a heavy bodied drone (male bee) spinning fast without its stingers. A parchment roll flutters down the rocking seat. Superimposed in bleeding vermilion, the dark burnished gold trim washroom glass with espresso frames comes eerily alive to display 666. No ballpark figure the beast number. I wrap the Turkish bath towel on my wet hair and step out to figure out my morning the ‘logic brained’ way. It’s not that I am high on Crystal Meth. In fact I don’t do drugs at all.

It’s a red letter day. My life’s first patient for genetic screening and heart beat monitoring is here. All’s great with the sensors presenting their proudest report. Suddenly! A flash to me! The living form winks with beryl blue eyes. Sitting in Padmasana(lotus position) he conveys a message with thunderbolt urgency. ‘Tell her stay calm to turn on the charm. 666 on his way.’ I can evangelize the appeal in the obsidian eyes. ‘Tell her!’ The amber skin wants to crawl out of the womb. What follows is an overlay of feelings, my self- censure as a doctor. How can I tell her what I just heard? What was this interlocution? I am a doctor not a harp playing angel, arriving with a crunch on the dry leafed earth bed to convey a ‘message.’

She resignedly says, ‘Six years back that state agent raped me and made me abort on the Columbus Ride. The police file’s still open. Pregnant now with my love, my refuge. My husband has been a healing sanctuary to me. I hope the bae’s ok?’ ‘Bae’ I smile. ‘ Bae your baby’s more than okay woman.’

The life-form floating in her amniotic fluid dances with his hands in a pectoral fin like glide. He waves a red book at me and smiles! In telepathic thought transference I can divine his glee. ‘I am not travelling light. My bags and baggage include the book keeping of justice. I have come back to her willy nilly, to avenge the one that dared to cut short the beast’s life… in that theme park six years back. Let him straighten his deck chair while the Titanic goes down.’

The temple of the living devil! He was romanticizing the past while uniting with the human flesh. ‘The thorns of his desires, now growing in living chambers!’

‘You’ll seal the case. Your own agent’s on the way.’ I patted her swollen tummy. SOMETIMES THE DEVIL MUST COLLUDE WITH THE DECENT TO CLOSE BOOKS OF JUSTICE…THE DESIRED WAY! I helped her up gently and went about my day.

I called it the ‘lighthouse.’ Down the years he had held my hand, ‘handled me with care’ and helped me inside the loft of his mansion with sloping red tin roofs. I had never hesitated in my step for he was known to be the big neighbourly brother, my safety mantle ever since I was six and he twenty. Anyone would think it was threaded in consanguinity but our association was not lineal.

Today he was supporting me from the hindquarters, pushing me up the spiral stairway like a racquet serving a tennis ball. He was leaving that night for his duty station, but before that he had to give me the Shrewsbury biscuit tin he had saved in that dramatic sensual free space he called his studio. Turruttttt!!! The wooden stool slipped as he lunged to fetch the biscuit tin from the veneer bamboo cabinet. He fell in a heap, his outstretched arms around me and his head a pendant to my bosom. I was crushed under the weight of this Atlantic bear and as we rolled on the floor, I felt frissons. Crushed in body and heart, the warrior in me fought with reason in the battlefield of passion. No! No! No! This is out of plan! He buys me Barbies and candies! I can’t be his belle! Meanwhile he engaged his fingers in a circular band around my silken strands and released them in sweeps of tenderness. His fingers now lay caved over my heart and slid deeper, wiping away all boundaries in seconds. That was the loss of my innocence, my emotions in floss. His olive green uniform’s reflection was a luminous filigree on the oriel window glass. “You are in uniform!” I managed in racing urgency. “Holy Cow!” I heard him mumble, “Yes! Respect for the uniform!” The steam dampened and the vapours cooled off. He got up sobered in his sopping uniform, extending a hand, grafting his lover presence forever in my heart. We were Minivets, leaders of a bird wave flying liberally across the blue tent, him in red and me sunshine yellow. Love doesn’t follow convention and is a therapy all by itself, even if the price is losing innocence. Skewed relationships carrying new meanings, who’s to comment acceptable or not!? I know somewhere in his wallet, in the plastic separators, I stayed as a frayed out photograph for a long time and who knows maybe even today!? I just know that the hands that lovingly pulled a moppet’s ribbon braids, held the strings to her heart; as it flew out of the loft window that night to rise like a light balloon higher and higher.

Did it matter that later down the years a male ‘boner’ in an arrow piercing thrust, entered to explore eve’s garden of fertility!? The sensation was not original if not stale. I did get filled up as a woman. Yet, the loss of innocence on my page was a vulnerable drop in the vast expanse of the ocean, where one leaps and loses to the unknown.

Rains Reconnect

My mind races through a ravine of memories,

to the rhythm and velocity of descending ivory rains.

All elements whistle the splashing, chatty rain song.

I weed out some invasive wild growth.

Clear barbs along the rose garden of my hopes.

Now let me float my paper boat...

Before someone comes and tells,

"Dear! It's but a magic spell."

Ah! Back I step into reality,

And floods again the bleeding pain.

For a few moments,

T'was just my mind reconnoitering;

In the petrichor of the silver rains.