Jewel of India

Jewel of India. From the dim hallway, wall swollen with summer damp, concave threshold to the morning's livid light. When my father said Gerard Street East, his voice, the passing subway tremors upwards into me reverberates in ligaments and membranes. On canvas shoes through minor parks, a pinball in a rudderless machine.

My father, transiently animate, funny in the ebbing language, bantering with shopkeepers. A lifeguard pours bleach in the fractured blue wading pool, sloshes it out with her legs. If I could, I'd view a produce stand, as he did, fill a paper bag with dill weed, bitter melon, ladyfingers. Miraculous reversal poster in the window of the Portuguese apartment.