Then Fire…rose up with Sita on his lap, radiant as the morning sun,
golden jewels and curling hair and gave her back to Rama,
saying, O Rama, here is thy Sita, whom no stain has touched. Not in word
or thought or looks has Sita turned aside from thee, though tempted every way...
The Ramayana
I know how it happens, when you’re driving your daughter home from ballet, her bun so hard to fasten tendriling now into carnivorous shoots, as she clamors from the backseat for her station—KISS or LUV or STAR-100. Here it is on the radio--newsflash. Interrupted canon. Report from the capital, the provinces, the hinterlands of slaughter. And you wonder—has he been shot, arrested, detained, in hiding, the journalist. Your journalist, the one who wrote then edited your life, rising to prominence back in his native land—after leaving you. Toppling your first marriage years ago?
And now, just like that, he’s back in your mini-van—the ghost of him—strapped-in with cranky kids and soccer paraphernalia. His dark skin and coconut smell, those spiced cigarettes. The sharpened fingernail on his left pinky scoring the inside of your thigh. It’s possible—you know it is—to be in two places at the same time. Safe in his tiny Javanese village where they practice magic, and in next to you in the shotgun seat. Cinta kamu, he says, his I-love-you-whisper, cinta, cinta cinta.... Not lingering in the satellite static of this news report from half a world away.
Maybe he’ll amuse the kids by eating a lightbulb like he did at that party, without getting cut. Perhaps he’ll frighten them into silence with samurai tricks from the Koran. Shadow puppets on the windshield, Rama chasing the beautiful deer through the forest.
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