Are they all the same the men we loved?

The one who promised and walked away

And the one who married

And the one whose seed I held inside

With such unholy patience and longing

You share with me a joke

That is yours

Today

I laugh with you

It is another tale of a woman

Who like us

Did odd jobs, a house, a husband and a child or two

Or none what difference would it make?

Yet in place and she danced to the tune

Until it soured her bones and soiled her blood.

But she smiled and hugged her tears as if

Nothing at all had happened.

There she was at the bus stop,

At the post office

In bed and the kitchen

Beside the computer and the bath room

Unlike Clytemnestra unlike Draupadi

Unlike Medusa unlike Anusuya

Kicking her angst afraid

It would not just eat her inside out

But follow her like a ghost and then

They would all know

These smells of the sweat

Only dead possess.