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A Note to the Indian Princess
The aunites gossip back home
About how you've grown
Out of your white cotton frocks
And into red silk saris
They talk about how you're ripe for marriage
About how quickly boys flock to you--
Your family's rich and you are beautiful.
You are like a princess with none of the excess.
The perfect Indian girl they paint is oversimplified.
The real you they can never comprehend.
Those brown khol-rimmed eyes and
That nose adorned by an understated ring confuses them.
So confused that they'd rather ignore
Your luscious red mouth.
But to me those soft lips were like velvet when they brushed across my eyelids when you tried to blow sand out of my eye during a drunken night on a Konkan beach.
Both too scared to be the first to say anything
We just sat there drunk and giggling
When the aunties speak of you
I can't help but imagine
Things that leave
Little to the imagination.
I am a woman
And you are a woman
The boys will wait.
We're on the same page.
