a bowl of plain steamed rice
a piece of bitter dark chocolate
a slice of crisp peeled pear

a mother or father who understands
the kitchen is the centre of the universe

children who sail out on long elliptical orbits
and always come back, sometimes like comets, sometimes like moons

From Cup; and appeared in Issue 5 (Nov. 2009) of Cha

Dear Meihong — Didn’t write this (see attachment). I found it right here on the computer screen this morning, ready for printing. Can you explain it? Is this one of your tricks? Who else could have come here in the middle of the night and done such a thing? On the other hand, the door downstairs was locked as usual, including the chain lock, which no one, including you, could have set in place and then have gone out the door. So maybe you or somebody sent this somehow over

Across the street is a KFC. I see a lot of young people with motorbike helmets tucked under their arms go in there, pushing the glass doors inward and letting out a blast of air-conditioned air. I’m an old man now, so they say, but I still like to pay attention to what young people do, so that I can communicate with my grandchildren. My grandkids sure do like their KFC, although none of them are old enough to ride motorbikes yet. I’m not sure if I want to live long enough to

Betrayal is one of those things that you can mull over, replaying over and over in your mind like an old cassette tape, shifting through the events that led up to it and trying to piece the blatant signs that you must have missed, puzzling over the image that somebody presented and the totally contradictory reality, but no matter how hard you feel the anger and the pain and try to rework memory, nothing about betrayal will ever, perhaps, make sense.

For instance, take Mahesh.

Muthu remembered the weariness and nausea. Stumbling, he had just managed to drag himself to the cement kerb before he blacked out.

As awareness returned, he saw that it was dark. His hand-cart was propped against the streetlight. The road was deserted. The squat shapes of the docks and warehouses, fronting the road made it eerie. The smell of the sea and rotting fish hung in the air. He struggled up and hitched the thick coir ropes across his chest, straining hard. He did not