I look through the window of the house:
Rooms, the semi-lit passageway, flakes of paint
Spent with moisture, the crack the length of a wall.

I walk down a street, stare at a house that
Could have been mine with the smell of wood smoke
In the yard, from the lopped gooseberry tree. 

The tart fruits combust, the roasted fenugreek seeds
Are warts on the swarthy skin of the pickle. The family trades
Dishes across the table: rice in return for lentils.

It is commonly held that cassia trees are meant
For avenues, so is the tamarind though the pulp simmers
In the stone pot at the kitchen long after the fire is put off.

What is it that peeps from the book at the shelf?
A slip of the sky to mark the page: a day in early
November, winter dormant between sepia covers.

Vision is crammed through frames of a window
As brain cells are compressed in slabs of memories;
Clothes she eased out of the wasted body, now

Bundled up. From a certain angle, you can look out
Without being seen. A window – any portal – aids  
Transitioning: a human body is one such.