When love ends there are the questions: Why? How?
Perhaps we were only held together by roux and well-steeped tea.
Our house seemed to shudder each time we dined,
as though even it realized the need for the South in South Asian.
One day your hands held ready-made curry boxes from S&B;
mine, mustard seeds and cumin.
In your eyes I saw the spindles of silver needles form, sharp like the taste of white tea.
How odd your face seemed, marked by chevrons of sweat, glistening and slick.
I licked the angles, hoping to taste the narcissus, the chaicha.
But my tongue tasted only warm cardamom and cloves.
In the samsara of us there is still a memory;
A place where your tea started as “tu”, and so did mine.
Where your curry was more than the easy noise of the bamboo outside of our house,
creaking and purposeful.
The poem is an immediate experience. Thank you.
I enjoy Simona’s poem “Tea and Curry”. I feel the first line is not necessary to the rest of the poem as what transpires between the lovers contributes to the ending of their relationship. The summary line at the beginning was not as subtle and discrete as the rest. Thanks.