One month into our marriage
I stand barefoot in the kitchen
of our small London apartment
my Persian grammar book in one hand
I place a whole chicken into the baking oven
with the other

when the beeper rings
I toss the book aside
rush to take out the tray

find bubbles of plastic
sputtering with heat
melting into the chicken skin

I stand staring for a while
embarrassed at my inability
to do the simplest things

when you come home from work
I hastily kiss your cheek
then say laughing
looking at your eyes

“I put the whole chicken with the plastic tray inside the oven by mistake”

I want to catch your instant reaction
before language can flood in
to cover up what you feel

but you only smile faintly
saying nothing
the bright white lights of the London tube
still in your eyes
a whiff of sweat, the smell of strangers
you sat next to mixing
in the wrinkles
of your cotton shirt

without a word
you reach for your phone
order something for us

substituting functionality for feeling
a new lexicon I am trying to learn

we dump the chicken
eat Nando’s instead
at the small dining table

later the splash of water
against the steel basin
as you stack our used white plates
against each other

at the dining table
I write on a white tissue paper with a blue pen:

“that quality of being so deeply enough for yourself
you remain at an inviolable distance from others”

your self-sufficiency
a bubble that stretches between us
threatening to burst
at any moment

*

The plates lean against eachother
all night spooning in the dark

three floors beneath us
on the sidewalk outside
our neighbour the Korean woman
bends down and scoops up
dog shit into a tissue paper
with a gloved hand
while her puppy watches with doleful eyes

she dumps the tissue into the nearby dustbin
with the methodical precision
of everything
in this city

                                                                                                                        trains
                                                                                                                                                   touch
                                                                                                                                    time

six thousand kilometers away
at that moment
a thick layer of smog
rolls into an empty road in Lahore
crawls across the massive billboard
with the housing society ad on it
one of the infinite real estate ads
that have cropped up in our absence
depicting a shiny new life
in a shiny new house
for a newly married couple

a man with a shaved square jaw
smiles widely at a woman
who looks up at his face
with a mixture of delight
and a hint of fear.

                                                                             [nothing that is lost
                                                                                                                                    can ever be recovered]
                                                                                                       *
That night I dream
of strange things

an ocean choked not with plastic
but with language
commas cresting on the tips of waves
seagulls balancing their delicate bodies
on water, seaweed slurping the bodies
of exclamation marks with relish

then with the fluid agility
known only to dreamers
I return to the deserted street in Lahore

a car’s shrill honk
tears the fabric of the night
into two pieces
and I see that the smog is gone
revealing fields of grass
shining on the billboard

but the house has been blown out
as if with an explosive
leaving a gaping whole
in the center of the board

watching it I think coolly: this is a petty acts of vandalism
like the ones we see routinely
done to women’s faces
on billboards in Lahore.
                                                                                                       *

The next morning
I wake up with a feeling that everything
has been created anew
not just our apartment
but also my body
and hands
the world

that evening
when you come home from work

I walk up to you
touch my finger
to the tip of your eyelash

you look into my eyes

for a moment
the city outside us
with all its languages
of measured entanglement
                                                                                      distance
                                                                                      averted gazes
                                                                                      absence of friendliness
                                                                                      in cafes and underground trains
                                                                                      impersonal exchange of human cells
                                                                                                     receiving a receipt from
                                                                                      a stranger’s hand
                                                                                                     a clipped ‘thank you’

disappear

it is just us

the bubble quivers

              the night

              in one quick gulp

               swallows

                           us

                                                                                                   bodies apartment equator earth

                                        whole.