I would watch you
Dressed in the softest fabric
The garment draped over you
Wrapping itself till it became second skin.
And you would step outside
The air parting around you as you moved
Before coalescing and reforming,
Leaving me trailing behind
A support act to your crimson glow
An also-ran, redundant and unwanted.
And I remembered
Crying as a child, waiting on the balcony
For my mother to return home
My world collapsing around me
If she was even five minutes late.
Then I would hear the familiar sound
The taxi arriving in a cloud of dust;
I would run forward, burying my head
In the silky folds of my mother’s saree
Sanctuary at long last….
