Anupama Raju

When not grooming young software engineers as a corporate trainer,
Anupama Raju is a writer. She lives in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala and
also teaches French at the Alliance Francaise. She's also a freelance
journalist  and her other interests include translation studies. So
far, she has been published in a few anthologies and journals,
including 'The Little Magazine'.

HOW WOULD IT FEEL?

How would it feel to be married to you?
Would I sway, safe, in your broad arms?
Or hide, scared, inside your hollow soul?
Perhaps I'd snooze, fed well by your fruits of labour.
Then, I will dream of your scented touch, hold, grasp,
woody like your mind.
Rooted in ground, in reality.
I hear you're heat-resistant,
safe from my burning passions.
But you grew on my fertile soil,
And now, stand tall like my ego.
So I will always water you with my devotion.

But who comes? An axe to saw down my life?
Please, don't take this away from me.

I need the broad arms, the hollow, the scented touch.
I need my husband. I need to be a wife.
Not the widow of a tree.