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The Cinnamon Peeler - Michael Ondaatje

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

neighbor 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 the 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.

—————-

I have read this poem backwards, top down, down up, sideways and inside out. It’s travelled with me to the UAE, China and India. The novel this poem comes from, is one of the most staggeringly beautiful books i’ve ever read. It makes me feel at home, distant, like i’m yearning yet contented, and most of all it makes me appreciate how insanely beautiful the people of this world can be. 

Speaking of insanely beautiful people, I’ve got some insanely beautiful friends. I wouldn’t have dreamt of it.

School is crazy.

26th December

Merry belated Christmas! It’s two days till i leave the motherland and delve headfirst into finishing up last-minute work, baking for new year’s, buying all the belated birthday presents and generally just getting back to routine.

It’s been a crazy-ass two months from Dubai to Yunnan to Tanjore but, extremely rewarding as well. I can’t wait for 2012. I feel like it’s going to be good. Even if we die :-)

Day 2 in the motherland.

There’s something about being here that’s just slower and more earthy. I could literally follow the journey of a mosquito that lands on my skin and sucks my blood and then flies off very content because my blood is probably enriched with all the fantastic food. 

I haven’t spent more than a week at home in SG this vacation and that’s so strange, although i’m planning all the things I want to do when I get home already. (which is in like 15 days….)

Tomorrow we’re going to my dad’s ancestral village home, quite exciting! This trip was essentially about studying and getting work done and spending time with my grandpa - and yeah that’s what it’s about really :-)

I miss my friends though, most most!