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Outside a tarp, you sit
rubbing your hair with
ghee.

Fill a basin with water
and buttermilk.

I watch you take off
your blouse, pour the
mixture though your
hair.

Squat over the basin
to wash beneath your
skirt.

I'm told where to place
my fold-up cot, near
the women in purple
turbans, matching veils.

Unclothed now, except
for veil, you pull your cot
to mine, your scintillating
silver ornaments with flames.

Nakki clips the goats, winds
the hair into skeins.

Urgency in this tribe to watch,
you who they call Ratti Ben
(Sister of Blood).

To see Ratti Ben pleasure me,
the female shepherds pull out
tiny glass vials of snuff to
'clean' their eyes.  They rub it
into their eyes, causing them
to water copiously, the pain
they go through to watch
two women.

The female shepherds on their
knees surrounding us, climbing
each other as it gets beyond
risque against a black backdrop
of stars.

The bonds between the 
shepherds and Ratti Ben
strengthened like calcium
laid down in a bone.

How comforting to pass
through ritual with the
support of a group.

The stars swing past
midnight.

"Take the goats and
leave us."

Her passion for me
fleeting, but most
tender of gestures,
the same lust across
cultures.

She left me sore in the
bones I didn't know
I had.

It is difficult affection
which separates us
at the veil.

It was with a woman
of India that I can
hear an echo from
our common past.

She extracted something
from me, everything I
had to leave.

A moment that touched
the shadow of something
passionate, an articulate
scream.  Gestural language
is universal, so slowly, we
come ...

We come to understand
one another.

Respectful silence.

 

Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman