“Hunger is good discipline and you learn from it.”
Ernest Hemingway

We shared a cup of tea
in Mysore when I still
felt like Ernest Hemingway

I wondered if the mix of
our sip on the lip
constituted a kiss

Exotic as jackfruit and as juicy
as the Georgia peaches that
you said grew in your backyard in Atlanta

And I believed you

We read A Moveable Feast in the
backseat of an old British car
on our way to town to
buy antibiotics and chocolate

The bindi that you placed on
Hemingway’s forehead is still there

We lifted bricks every day
that villagers stacked in neat rows
before we woke in the morning
and yet I referred to the two of us
as the Hebrew slaves and hoped that
together we could dance the straw into
the mud and make bricks

And you laughed

Together we could be
Sahib and the lovely lady
Riding elephants along the Ganges
and hunting tigers in the jungle

Me under my sun-helmet
You under a silk umbrella
Us under the mosquito netting