Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 841 Sat. October 07, 2006  
   
Literature


Portrait of an Elderly Woman Eating Breakfast
(for Nanu)
Tarfia Faizullah

She eats toast with marmalade.
Light streams through an open window,
her hair a flame, red with henna
gnawed between the grooves of her palms,
restless.

Later, she billows jasmine and pungent
spices as she lurches from room to
room, overseeing glistening mounds of mangoes,
papayas gathering solidity through her touch,
red-tipped fingers pressed into yellow, grass green rinds.

How many nights I lay
beside her,
unmoving,
a body filling with feathers;

together, we listen
to her husband's breathing
pitched laboriously against
white mosquito netting.

Now I say to her,
release his tumor your tears
have made cold, flinty, and Rest.
For her grief I breathe no other prayer.

Tarfia Faizullah is studying for her master's in creative writing in Virginia, USA.