Ladies

by Purvi Shah

Under the scorch, she would be cross-legged, threading
together not the hem of a chuniya or sleeve
of blouse like the industrious girls, but a fistful
of jasmine, palm like a vase.

Searing steel and white tendril through green stem,
drops of juice erupting, she finally unfurls
the string as the jasmines soar into a doubled
garland around her hair. With plucked words,

this arrangement is my anthology, though
the alphabet is tough and less pungent.

In cheerless moments, if blessed, I retrieve
fallen jasmine from the cracks of my floor
and clip the individual blossoms to my hair —
a bud each evening until the bloom ends.

In the new economy of this concrete world,
jasmines grow stingily even as we witness the swell
of city bodies. But forget for now this scarcity —

a petal, a bloom, a scent links
continents, histories, desires, the joys
of girlhood strung in solitude — the expectation
of welcome company, around the always aroma.