|
Home
|
|
photo allposters.com
Edge
‘Do you want to put your eye out?’
My wife snatches the letter opener from my second born,
who clutches air after it. She sinks into herself,
this child of twelve, and seeks a patch of sunlight.
When my wife goes to work, I retrieve the blade,
sit down in that square of light
half-filled with my half-daughter.
I place the cutting edge in her hand;
The child does not grab it as a magpie,
but decorously, like a knighthood.
She puts her tongue through the eye at the grasp,
muscle twinkles, darts- a moray eel, a coral cave.
She swallows steel, full three fourths,
and sings. The blade is a tuning fork;
bird songs resonate from her throat.
When she is done it slides out smoothly,
a six-shooter from a holster well-oiled.
She presses its edges to her skin,
drafting furrows, narrow and long
that she proceeds to crosshatch.
I attend, sharing her sunlight. She reads
formal pronouncements from her skin:
the state of her health, that of the nation’s,
a possibility of timely rain, of a hung government.
She looks at the light that has changed shape,
then returns the stolen toy. As I replace it
on the top shelf my wife returns,
and my daughter, all silk and silence
retreats into her autistic shell.
© Mustansir Dalvi 2003. All rights reserved.
|
