Milk and Honey

By Shreeja Ravindranathan

Amma,

All those years we spent scrub-a-rub-dub-dubbing 

With milk and honey –

grating my brown husk

to scoop the tender kernel of white,

– Have left me honey-mouthed and

overflowing with the milk of kindness.

Now men want to drink me,

like coffee,

like the dusk,

like whiskey,

and caramel

and they think I’m still unfair, Amma

because I won’t be contained.

I am just the monsoon river

trying to rise above the(ir) dirt I flowed in

for twenty years;

the coconut shy at the fairground —

knock me down and break me

for my better half

but I ooze nectar and aqua

and they say nothing quenches like water, 

Amma.

By Shreeja Ravindranathan