The Affair Poem by Tishani Doshi

These days men on curbs are curved
Like farm tools or bits of wire,
Like unruly saucers of tea flung
Into the trees, the walls, the breeze.

Houses are shifting too —
Up and going on emerald shoes,
Colliding on streets, spitting
Bits of brick and splinter on our sleeves.

This one holds a wife
Standing at the bleak stairway of a dream,
Grappling with her wedding veil;
With mothballs and pearls and girls.

See, the husband is rising — a shipwreck
Disappearing against a photograph
Of beaten love. He’s separating pink
From dark, fodder from cloud,

Movement from half-movement.
We can throw away these things:
The sweat, the chests, the hair,
The dead weight of despair dropping

Into the living rooms of our lives;
The broken furniture, the cracked foundations.
I claim you back, the wife says to him.
She claims him back.

But what of this youngest one
Inching along the sinew of the floor?
He knows nothing- little kernel of snail —
Except to unfurl along his silver trail.