Brazen Sand

I waited in my pillaged shack

like you’d ordered me to,

before you trod foreign sands.

The mirages of your arrival

were like remnant shadows of my

fallen, looted village

that you’d scoured on your way.

But, my parched earthen lips, breathless

bequeaths a final heave for you,

a fair disgust, to pale the heart-line

and renew its beauty with 
the smell of fresh henna

and glass bangles clinking at my wrists.

“These limitless boundaries I shall cross

to marry you, Sana.” you’d said Musafir.

“Three years! For a bandit?” I thought every night. 

and I walked into Iftikar’s thatch again...

Rajashree Anand