A herd of ponderous grey elephants arrives,
not there one moment,
and then the next, a swarm of skin
ushered onwards across the blue sky
like a blanket over Karachi
by the salty sea breeze.
The beasts do not stop here often,
for this hot and dusty land
offers them not
the watering hole they seek.
But it is September
and the moist wind gestures
the final flourish
of a conductor’s routine.
It waits with bated breath
for the earth to gather itself
and marvel at the magic
it was witness to.
Silence sits expectantly,
stale air between two hands
inclined to applause.
A leaf fidgets in the quiet
until rain and rocks reunite
like the palms of an audience breaking
into thunderous appreciation of
the music of the monsoon. 

The Key

Four and a half pointy teeth
bite into my skin
as my fingers, blind and questing,
explore the denim darkness
of my fading Levi’s jeans.
It clinks coldly at my touch,
a jaw that reminisces
its past life as a bell.
Unsheathed, it gleams.
“Wheatish” my mother would have called it.
The key is golden
like fields of wheat.
But my mother calls everything “wheatish”
like my skin
when I asked what colour I was
and the sea of tents that August
that still floods her dreams.
Silently my key slinks
into the door that awaits its
whisperings and secrets.
Click.
Home greets me once more
as it did my mother once
in fields of wheat
between four and a half pointy teeth.