For Ersano Pargasuri
They had gone to look at Adila’s apple-
the wholeness of it, how she held it
in her hand like a precious little moon.
Usually, they were each given a quarter
and if they were lucky maybe a third.
Still they would argue about
whose slice was larger than who.
But there she was, smelling of medicine
in her small bed, smiling as she raised it in the air
to show her cousins how lucky she was-
it was worth being sick for. She stored it in the chest.
‘The smell,’ she said, ‘the smell it gives
to my clothes.’ It stayed there until it was rotten.