Mas

The bus swings through traffic
photon quick
bass thumping a
New Delhi tango in the damp night
headlights and bakso stalls
flashing by in a staccato instant
"He says you are beautiful and he loves you"
I turn back towards the window
trying to invent a new word for love
the hard won kind
the kind without needs
or demands
the kind that will wait or hurry
and never ask
It must have its own name, this kind
but what is it
Adik
that makes a brother treat another
man's sister like a whore
then threaten his own for less
What kind of a man is a brother who is
so afraid of his his own shadow?

How do we survive
      women
in their foreign land of fear?
How can I protect you when I
have no refuge of my own
Not even a corrugated shack
perilously perched
a top
Nagoya Hill lit 30 watts dim

And then the wheels scream  to a stop
outside the glowing masjid where
one hundred veiled sisters pray
pitch perfect with the muzzein
before a squealing siren swallows avery ambient sound
and pierces my bones.

If you read the shattered shards
     like a gypsy woman's tea leaves
you will see

The only beautiful thing on this island
adik
is you
     us
       the ying yang sisters
silenced and in search of a word
in an unwritten, unknowable, unspeakable
language
that we might inhabit
    safe
from the tyranny of brotherly love.