My Mother's Hair

Summary

My mother's thin salwar

gives her away.

Her plait snakes

across her back

and turns

to whispers at the ends.

Can we touch it?

they ask in the icy playground.

She shyly places the dark coil

in their hands.

After bathing,

it is transformed,

the rope, released

from its binding fibres,

falling in

a heavy curtain

on to her shoulders.

Steaming by the old radiator,

she sits

with her pan of dried pulses,

discarding

tiny masquerading stones.