The Cinnamon Peeler

 If I were a cinnamon peeler

 I would ride your bed

 and leave the yellow bark dust

 on your pillow.

 Your breasts and shoulders would reek

 you could never walk through markets

 without the profession of my fingers

 floating over you. The blind would

 stumble certain of whom they approached

 though you might bathe

 under the rain gutters, monsoon.

 Here on the upper thigh

 at this smooth pasture

 neighbour to your hair

 or the crease

 that cuts your back. This ankle.

 You will be known among strangers

 as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

 I could hardly glance at you

 before marriage

 never touch you

 — your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.

 I buried my hands

 in saffron, disguised them

 over smoking tar,

 helped the honey gatherers...

 When we swam once

 I touched you in water

 and our bodies remained free,

 you could hold me and be blind of smell.

 You climbed the bank and said

                      this is how you touch other women

 the grass cutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.

 And you searched your arms

 for the missing perfume

                      and knew

            what good is it

 to be the lime burner’s daughter

 left with no trace

 as if not spoken to in the act of love

 as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 You touched

 your belly to my hands

 in the dry air and said

 I am the cinnamon

 peeler’s wife. Smell me.