Untitled Post

“Speak you this with a sad brow?”

Never
So this is how I got this cut:

That day too
I got back from school
it was a sunny afternoon
I ran up
with a spring in my feet

123.4
My home
A big lock on the old door
Nobody home
where is everybody?
not a soul in sight

I had to go
I am going to leak
I jumped a curb
to the right
Don’t know why
I peeked in from the window
it still smelt of of last winter
– paint and turpentine

Anybody home
I have to go

Even in the best of schools
toilets stink
boys have piss wars
you get jumped.
you Hindu or you Muslim
you stand
they sit

if you do have to
have to go
in school
you stand up from that back row
head held low
you raise your right hand
hold it just close to the chest
a straight palm facing
the bespectacled Mam
no smile
look very Majboor
you sing out:
‘Miss, may I go to toilet?’

Can’t go
I had to go
That day too my bladder was full
how I held on
earlier in that moving bus

The home is locked

So now I must go
there
to my favorite spot
the wall next to the red square
just at the foot of the four stairs
where in old days I was warned
not to go
‘we do dishes there.’

So the wall
it was going to be
I dropped my bag
under the foot of the window
A quick lunge back over the half-foot curb
over the stairs
and to the wall, I go

But, no

My left foot hit the worn edge of that curb
I tumbled
I fell
across the pitch line
and then my brow hit the knee of first step
Before the pain arrived
an aunt  arrived on the scene
she cried out

or do you play the flouting Jack,
to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder,
and Vulcan a rare carpenter?

I am told I didn’t cry
This I willingly believe
I remember I didn’t cry
How could I
you told me I wasn’t crying

I always claimed it took seven stitches
but I know I took only five
to close my case of Boomb’fo’tun

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