Maru and the Writer
by Tushar Jain
she was all of eight,
when Maru, with her red
hair and soft, green eyes, was
left to spend the winter holidays
in the hills, with her writer uncle,
who she’d met only once before
at a small, charming wedding,
when she was six, and
he forty-seven
the writer lived alone,
worked and slept at his desk,
his feet jammed in a storm of
scattered sheets, and his hands
bruised with blue and black ink,
and when Maru had crept inside
— — suitcase dangling from a hand — -
for an hour, he simply sat there,
wracking his brains, straining
to make out her name
in the evenings, when
Maru tumbled in, a bucket
of drawn water in hand, she’d
find him prostrate on the table,
a pencil behind a ear, his coffee
mug on the floor, cracked, and
the open window pouring
in doves and daylight
some nights, the writer
would stay outdoors, in the
snow, writing in the dim light,
on fallen birches, in the wake
of wolf howls tearing at the
moon, and inside, Maru would
rampage through the cabin,
cold, hunting for kindling, and
frustrated, in the end, would
jam a crop of pencils, his,
in the fireplace
at dinners, the moody,
grumbling writer, would
turn up late, with a comb
stuck in his hair, breadcrumbs
in his beard, and breath soaked
in gin, and as Maru ladled broth
into his bowl, dressed his lap in
napkins, and laid out the cutlery,
the room would drown in snores,
of her uncle gone to sleep
finally, the day when Maru
was packed to leave, she
snuck into his room, for a last
goodbye, but instead, caught
him hanging upside down from
the rafters, in a mussed-up old
underwear, a cigarette enclosed
in lips, prodding his temples for
inspiration; Maru sighed, and left,
dragging her suitcase through the
sun-dappled snow and grass,
vowing never to marry a writer