2443 Kilometers

Delhi is 2443 kilometers away.
She feels every one of them
in her grinding bones,
as they cup
Her heart
Reaching and stretching
Into the quiet night
like a mobile signal,
While her husband sleeps
A stone sentinel. 

His voice is clear
Not as if he were here,
But like there's less of Delhi
In him, and more
Of her.
(It's only his new phone.)
Her heart is mute; for
He's grown now
Into a prickling keekar
And she's a bamboo grove, bending
with subtle pride.
So she lets the debt remain,
Of the nine months
Of the flint years
Of her womanhood.

He bears the weight of those 
years, like a cloud
Swollen with unshed rain
Lowering
Patiently, even attentively.
Her hunger arches the sky
She is the whole earth
But he won't dissipate
Into the coiling mass
 of her memories.

Delhi's anonymity has
Leached into his face, arranging
their planes into familiar ruins,
Mausoleums to his childhood
And she the only caretaker.
He's a thicket of alleys and malls
Flyovers unwinding in a sprawl
and their home too small. 
Smaller than two peeling rooms
in Delhi,
Even with, or perhaps precisely
Because of her fretful care,
When he comes-goes
Once a year, on a pilgrimage
To the first goddess
To receive his wage
To renew his debts. 

Imphal is four hours by plane
2443 kilometers by land.
Tonight he feels each one 
In his jaw, in his ears,
Like the ache of a phantom lover
Tattooing one's body 
As he waits for those small
beeps of concern.