The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler 
I would ride your bed 
and leave the yellow bark dust 
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek 
you could never walk through markets 
without the profession of my fingers 
floating over you. The blind would 
stumble certain of whom they approached 
though you might bathe 
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
– your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers . . .

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

                    this is how you touch other women 
the grass cutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter. 
And you searched your arms 
for the missing perfume

                                      and knew

                  what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter 
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love 
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched 
your belly to my hands 
in the dry air and said 
I am the cinnamon 
peeler’s wife. Smell me.