The current went at ten, like it always does,
and the whole of Dhanmondi groaned at once —
ten thousand ceiling fans slowing to a stop
like ten thousand people sitting down.
The children are at their nanu's in Mymensingh.
The flat is very quiet.
I'd forgotten it could be this quiet.
One candle on the windowsill. The palm fan from the market.
You in your lungi on the floor because the floor is cooler,
me in my oldest cotton sari, the red one,
the one I wore the first year,
the one I should have thrown out years ago
and now I'm glad I didn't.
I fanned you. I don't know why. It was too hot to talk.
Back and forth, slow,
the candle bending every time the fan went past,
your eyes closing,
and I watched the sweat on your chest catch the light
and something in me that had been asleep for eleven years
sat up and said — oh.
Oh, there you are.
You opened your eyes.
I didn't stop fanning. You didn't stop looking.
The first rain started on the window, fat and slow,
the kind that smells of hot dust,
and you took the fan out of my hand, very gently,
and fanned me instead,
my face, my throat,
the place where the sari pin was,
which, at some point —
I don't know when, I wasn't paying attention —
wasn't.
The current came back at one.
We heard the fans start up all over the building.
We didn't turn ours on.
