Leaves

The room is dark except for the bleak late evening moonlight struggling to seep in through the thin curtains billowing into the room. There is a desk against one wall, with a window overlooking the untended backyard. Sheaves of paper cover every inch of the surface of the desk, and on top of them all, at the center of the desk, sits a 1941 Royal Quiet Deluxe, its keys collecting dust, a ribbon broken. A pair of glasses rests on a stack of black and white photos with scalloped edges and a grainy finish, browning with age. In the corner, on a stand, is an old gramophone. Yes, it works. In fact, at this very moment the stuttering static fades into the first few chords of a sitar. The air is warm. The notes sweat, glisten. Listen. A tabla joins in. The song rises.

Across the room, the only other source of light is the soft orange glow of a forgotten cigarette burning away in an ashtray, next to a rocker where a man, his head falling to his shoulder, is sound asleep. In front of him, on a low table, an abandoned game of chess waits. The man snores.

On the pale blue walls around him, canvases hang; empty, white. Each has taken him a few weeks to finish. He’s stood at his easel by the window everyday the last few months, transfixed, unable to pull himself away, struggling to grasp an image, a memory and turn it into something real. Something more tangible. Each time, the finished painting is very slightly different from the others. A breeze ruffling through her hair. A subtle up-turn of her lips into a barely detectable smile. The eyes, crinkling in the corners. Just the eyes alone take him hours to get right. In the end, there she is, looking at him from every corner of the room, from every angle. Through the hair over her eyes, that he itches to brush away. Peering up through her thick lashes. From the corner one eye in a profile. And in one with a look on her face as blank as the canvas it sits on.

A breeze from the open window blows the ashes of the cigarette towards the sleeping man. He wrinkles his nose, his forehead creasing, but then his face relaxes. He shifts. Places his feet on the table, precariously close to his ivory queen. And he opens his eyes.

Fingers grasped tightly around the teak armrests of the rocker, he pulls his torso forward and peers out through the sheer white cotton drapes out past the straggling strangers lost in thought at they cross the street to the other side, or walk along the sidewalk, their faces hanging. Across the street at the bus stop, where a young couple stands side-by-side, leaning against a tall tree, looking straight ahead. Once every few minutes, the boy leans out to check if the bus is coming. The girl taps him on the shoulder, and when he turns to look at her, she points to her cheek. He leans over and kisses her. A few minutes later, she taps him again, he turns around, she points to the other cheek and he kisses her again.

The old man stares at the barren tree, bereft of the warmth of its leaves, of all but one. That one leaf, resilient, faithful. The tree, holding on. The leaf, its edges turning orange. The tree, holding on. The careless young couple leaning against it. He worries. The young man walks back into the street, craning his neck for an approaching bus.

“You still got some time,” the man says out loud, his voice gruff from a lack of use, closes his eyes and leans back in his chair. Against his chest, a pocket watch ticks. The second hand makes its rounds. The minute hand takes a step forward. The man’s fingers tap the front of the armrests. The polish has worn out at the ends, leaving the wood soft and familiar to his touch. Sweat pours down his back. He rubs the wood, carefully massaging it, tenderly. He rocks back and forth and the rocker creaks. Back and forth. The tabla beats. Listen.

Outside, the bus comes. The couple gets on. The last leaf on the tree breaks free of its branch, flutters and soars dizzyingly towards the pavement. Inside, the old man clutches at his chest. His forehead creases. Then relaxes. His foot lands against the ivory queen. She falls.

Outside, the leaf lands softly. It shivers in the breeze. Stills. And then gets swept away to join the rest of the old, dried leaves across the sidewalk. When rain comes, minutes later, it clings to the bottom of a shoe and disappears down the street.

Inside, the needle on the gramophone rises.

Trombone

The Trombone desires breath
Fresh air
Everytime
New Lips
To curve
Around his mouth

Full lips
With curves
Around his mouth

New Lips
Until
The old ones desire
A Flute

Palak Paneer Recipe

Sascha:
Dude, can I please have your palaak paneer recipe?

Me:
I don't really have a recipe for my palak paneer. The magic is in my hands. And I don't think I ever put cheese in it cause I don't know how to make it without the cheese melting. But as for what I made that one time that you liked, read on:

In a pot, put in desi-sufficient amount of vegetable oil. (Hint: That means a lot of oil. At least enough to drown the base of the pot in at least ½ a centimeter of oil.) Add either half a bag of frozen onions (chopped) or 1 ½ big onions finely chopped. Torture them a while. Let them turn slightly brownish-reddish (DON'T BURN 'EM!).

Then, add about 2 huge tomatoes, chopped (not necessarily finely; semi finely will do) or 3 medium-sized ones. Salt to
taste (half teaspoon should be ok for one bag of frozen spinach. I don't do fresh spinach so don't ask me about that). Lots of red pepper (umm... to taste). You may, at this point, add ½ a teaspoon of garlic paste and ½ of ginger paste, or 1 teaspoon of garlicandginger paste. But only if you feel like it. It will add some zing to it, but you'll survive without it, too). Soon you will start smelling the yummy-ness. At this point, add your spinach. (Hopefully it's frozen spinach so it already has some water
content to it.) Stir. Close the lid and step away. Not too far. Is the stove on too high? It better not be! Go take a piss or something. Wash your hands. Peek into the pot (not the one in the bathroom, the one in the kitchen). Depending on how much moisture the spinach gave out, you may or may not have to add some water. (Don't put in too much. Maybe a 1/2 cup to start). (Oh, and if you're using fresh spinach, its probably not going to give out much moisture so you should add 1 cup of water. That's my guess.)

Stir the thing for a while, then shut the lid again and again, make sure the burner's not flaming like the gay men of SF. NY-ers will do. Taste it once it starts getting soft (the spinach). You want it to get pretty soft- we desis cook the hell out of our
vegetables. When it's done, you'll know. And don't be afraid to add a little more water every now and then if you feel like it might be needed.

Enjoy!

The Eternal Question

She:
How much do you love me?

He:
As much as there is sand on Ocean Beach.

She:
Just Ocean Beach?

He:
All the beaches in the world.

Clouds

Disperse with promises
to reach the very ends
of the sky
to touch
the furthest emptiness
if it means
to lose one another

And then one day
return
tired, old, wrinkled, bled
with no more words

huddle close
and rain

Don't Write About Me

"Don't write about me," he said. So I did.

we don't live
as rectangles
straight, this way or that
then turning
because you say so

dust collected on your words
all that time, unused
unrecalled
I pulled them out of that old trunk
(memory)
shook them out
I scrutinized, discarded, saved

every time you move
you leave something behind
an old receipt
(the price quite steep)
a rainy afternoon
spent looking out the window
mail
video store cards
a cup, presented
on the first lonely birthday
books you never meant to read
soft things
hair collected from a pillow-

these remnants
they don't fit you anymore
but words
you fold, hang, frame
wear, drink, paint
you save- take them with you

"Please," he said, "please."
(I nodded, promised, lied)
"Don't write about me."

The Artist

He died from being an artist. Or was he a postman- delivering loveletters? Yes, he died of a broken heart.

He was a poet who lost his words. He misplaced them and couldn't find them anywhere.

He looked behind his fridge, he looked under his bed. He searched between the pages of the books on his shelves. In desperation, he even undressed his lamp and peeked under her shade.

He saw her bulb and wondered if maybe the words had evaporated due to her yellow heat. So he sat back and took a deep breath- he inhaled and he inhaled and he inhaled. Without exhaling.

His lungs exploded, shattering his ribs, which punctured his heart. And he died and he died and he died- all night long.

Words

A soft blue chair, that turns in its place. A blanket, green and orange. Lampshades salvaged from left-along-the-sidewalk. A wooden table, crafted by a friend. A piano- Mozart's "Sonata in f minor." Old blown out candles from I-wonder-when (dust settled around their wicks). Books, books, books, spilling from their shelves: dictionaries, anthologies, novels, journals, poetry, Shakespeare, bible, Quran, others. Framed pictures, paper lanterns, bicycles, bicycles, bicycles. A desk piled high with more books, books, books-

...and behind them, my love, in his stripes, floating in his words.

Waited

“I’ve waited my whole life for you,”
you read
this ground
beneath our feet
turn to me and
kiss

I’ve waited

The Girl Can Sure Scream!

Sascha:
i was at the walgreens the other day and wanted to ask the lady for condoms and earplugs coz i was looking for both..but i couldn't do it without you...too funny.

All This (1)

My glasses
sometimes magnify
Sometimes they diminish
His words

All This (2)

One morning, I woke up
and told the whole world
how wrong he was-
Many mornings,
not just one-
But this evening
I wake up realizing
he wasn’t
So wrong

It's Almost As if You Never Existed

So it is. Just like you said it would be. The shorter story. No love no glory. It’s as if you never existed. Never came and went. Never came. Never went. What do I have to show? Some pieces of furniture that I remember shopping for with you; that entertainment center that the TV rests on (the TV you insisted on, the flat screen, huge fucking TV)- that entertainment center that you so had your heart set on you were almost unhappy that they didn’t have it in stock at the store- so much so that I called them every day until I found it at another location. This futon that we bought together, too, and as memory recalls, we were fighting that day, too. These songs that play in the background while I write that I attach to you, to memories of you, either because we heard them together for the first time, both loved equally (Did we love each other equally? As equally as we loved these songs?), or because they made me think of you then, and so they make me think of you now. This heater that buzzed all night long in that apartment of ours on top of the hill; this heater that you so despised when you first came to visit me in San Francisco that January two years ago. That bar table that your parents sent us, US, for Christmas. That dictionary we used when we played Scrabble and you made words I knew weren’t real. This coffee table that we put that 1000 piece three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle together on. This song that’s playing on the radio now, that I don’t think I would have ever noticed if it weren’t for you, and probably wouldn’t have cared too much for if you hadn’t fallen in love with it (Did you love this song more than you loved me?) Oh, how you hated these sheer red curtains of mine. I think I will keep them forever.

It’s almost as if you never existed. Never came to be with me, never left. If it wasn’t for all those memories I have, I would have wondered if I’d imagined you. Who knows, I might have imagined you and everything I “remember” of you.

The Tender Loins

I look at the time on my cell phone as I stand inhaling another Marlboro- I’ve taken to chain smoking again since I’ve returned to San Francisco- and decide five more minutes. I’ll give him five more minutes before I call. I long for a green tea frappuccino from Starbucks, but remind myself that its way too early in the morning for whipped cream. I look up at the building one more time, and then down the street. I am wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, my feet clad in flip-flops, not much to differentiate me from the street urchins, I worry. No. I don’t worry. It’s just a thought that crosses my mind. I am standing in the middle of the tender part of the Tenderloin, at 10:13 in the morning, obsessively smoking my Marlboro Lights Menthols one by one, very obviously waiting for someone, and I hope no one mistakes me for a prostitute or a druggie waiting for her pusher. The last thing I want to do is worry. Or look like I’m worried. Another thought crosses my mind: Am I going to feel this way every time I walk through this neighborhood? Cause maybe that means I shouldn’t be looking for apartments here.

Behind the grilled entryway, footsteps shuffle down the corridor and come to a rest. I turn around.

“Hi,” a male voice calls out. Surprisingly younger than I expected. “Are you waiting to be let in?”

“Hi, are you the manager? I’m here to see the studio,” I respond, trying to peer through the ivory-colored grill.

“Oh, no I’m not the manager, did you call him?” the voice answers, yet I still can’t see who I’m talking to. It’s bright outside, being morning and all, and dark behind the grill.

“I’m sorry I can’t see you. It’s kinda dark in there,” I reply, narrowing my eyes to look past the gate to the other side.

“Yeah. I’m black. That happens,” he says as he lets me in. My cheeks are burning and I feel ignorant. I worry I might have come across as racist, and I try to think of some apology that would make sense but nothing comes to mind. So I just laugh. It was a funny thing to say. But it’s a weird, self-conscious laugh. And as soon as I see who I’ve been exchanging words with, I become even more self-conscious. He is tall and thin and well dressed in an athletic kind of way, and very good looking. Next to him is sitting someone who makes me worry again. And this time I won’t retract my words. It is another black male, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a wagon- yes, a wagon- full of broken furniture, including a wooden coffee table, a small bookcase, a chair, a tiny TV-and-VCR-in-one. The man is drooling, his chin resting on his palm, his elbow resting on his knee. His eyes are looking straight at my face and he is quiet.

“So my friend here is moving out, you want to see his apartment? It’s really nice,” the cute guy asks.

“Oh, no, I’ll just wait for the manager; I think he should be down any minute.”

“Hey you want to buy some furniture?” the guy asks. “It’s all new and Reggie here needs to get rid of it.”

I look back at the wagon and wonder how many times the man might have sat on the chair butt naked and jerked off at some porn rented from across the street, his cum spraying the TV screen.

“No, thanks,” I say and take out my phone to dial the agent who was supposed to meet me at 10 to show me a studio.

Old Photographs

That’s me. Third one in from the right; the giggling one with her head down. The pattern of henna on my palms has not yet started fading. The gold jhumka earrings hang heavy on my earlobes and I am proud of them. They are the first piece of real jewelry I’ve owned, an heirloom my grandmother gave my mother for her wedding and now my mother has given to me. The folds in my sari are weighed down by the gold thread embroidery and sequins that adorn it; one tiny glimmer of light catches my eye, a sequin that has come loose and I have to make an effort not to pick at it. The sari is hot and difficult to walk in, but now that I’m married, I finally have the freedom to wear one and so I do. At every step, I worry the whole six yards of the delicate chiffon will come undone and slide right off my body. I try to stay still, not get up unless I have to so that the chances of that happening are slimmer; the less I move, the less the sari will.

It is the day after my wedding and I have returned to my parents’ house for the ritual morning-after brunch. My cousin, the one in pink to the left of me, can’t stop cracking jokes. It is no secret that I am no longer a virgin, a fact I am embarrassed of as my father stands in front of me taking the picture. Later this evening is the Valima reception to formally celebrate my deflowering, a successful consummation proven by the blood on the white sheet that my mother-in-law grabbed this morning while I was in the shower, and set on display in the courtyard, hanging on a clothesline. When my husband and I left this morning for the brunch, she was still sitting on the phone boasting to her friends, mother-in-laws who had not been so fortunate.

But a week after the wedding, my husband leaves to finish his engineering degree in America. He promises to send for me and in his absence I am expected to live with his family, my in-laws, instead of with my own parents in my own room in the house I grew up in.

As though living with strangers isn’t enough, my mother-in-law, has decided that since I am living with them, she no longer has to do any housework and everything is left for me. I cook. I set the table for lunch and dinner. I wake up early to make their breakfast. I iron their clothes and I wash them. I wash the dishes. In barely two weeks the henna on my palms has faded to a pale, almost invisible orange. I am no longer a bride. Just a wife, abandoned indefinitely by the man I am to live the rest of my life with.

Babu Ji, the respectful term my husband addressed his father with and I adopted, still calls me bahu; bride. No one refers to me with my name. My mother-in-law is Aapa. My husband is nameless, too. I know his name and have only uttered it in my bed at night as I sleep by myself. I roll the letters in my mouth. I repeat the name. I whisper different tones I will say his name in when I am with him in America. In America everyone says each others’ name. Husbands, wives, sisters, brother, mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law.

Empty Room

I asked about the empty room and he said he had none. I led him to the empty room and he said it wasn’t empty. Obstinately refused, when I pointed out the settled dust, the musty smell, the peeling paint, the scratches on the hardwood floor, from the furniture pulled out. I walked to every corner and covered every inch of the room, insisting it was uninhabited. But he looked at me as if I was the strange one. He shook his head and bade me follow. He led me to the window, pointing to the fingerprints on the windowpanes. He knelt on the floor to drag his finger through the dust; dead skin cells. He picked up a stray hair, a broken nail. He peeled away a layer of the pale blue paint, and beneath it were her words, scrawled. He said she was still there, and the room wasn’t empty.

Trail of Words

The trail of the words he spoke that night have led me here, to follow my own uncommunicated thoughts, unexplored ambitions, unforgivable decisions. They are. But I followed the trail of his words through the night, past the filters of rationality, across the continent. Here. I followed the trail of his words to my future, my own trail of words, and now I search for one glimpse of his trail. I wish he would follow his own trail of words and find himself here. And find me, lost in my trail of words.

Eight Years

After eight years of absence I breathe beside him again and we sit staring out at the open sky beyond this cliff. We need not speak, we need not touch. I know the way his lips will purse, will part, and his mouth will exhale the sound of patience. He will wait eight more years. And another eight after that. And another eight after that. As long as I promise to come back, he will wait.

Bored At Work

Me:
I'm so bored at work today. And tired. I just want to curl up somewhere and go to sleep.

Sascha:
One of my friends used to sleep at work under his desk.
You gotta desk?

One Month

One month. Barely, in fact. I knew him for one month and somehow that short amount of time managed to impress me in such a way that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I wasn’t in love with him; by no means. It was just the fluidity of his lifestyle. He had no strings, nothing to connect him to anything in the world. All he had was his dog and his bike. Something about that was intriguing. Maybe because it was what I wanted myself.

You know how someone can pass through your life, for a short amount of time yet make such a big impression? That’s what happened. All I had with him were a few nights in the kitchen sipping wine, in the dark, with only a strand of Christmas tree lights blinking along a wall. A few nights curled up on the futon, pretending to watch movies. Chain-smoking on the back patio. And the next thing I knew, I was writing a novel about him.