Half the Perfect World - Anjani Thomas

Every night she’d come to me

I’d cook for her, I’d pour her tea

She was in her thirties then

Had made some money, lived with men

We’d lay us down to give and get

Beneath the white mosquito net

And since no counting had begun

We lived a thousand years in one

The candles burned

The moon went down

The polished hill

The milky town

Transparent, weightless, luminous

Uncovering the two of us

On that fundamental ground

Where love’s unwilled, unleashed

Unbound

And half the perfect world is found