I am in the foreground, plonked left-front, because

I’m short and had it not been for that saving grace, for my

Lilliputian bones, my squattish head, I’d be much more

forgettable.      The girls make two rows, I bask

in the brightness cast by their expressions, their rightly

entitled sense of expectation. I think of the old country,

its reconstruction through myths and tales,

a Wal Amba root cracks through the floor, coils ‘round

my ankle, drags me back to a land disfigured
by colonial canings, to the clank of rupees secreted

in my grandmother’s tea-chest, a high commission

and my best patent leather shoes, the peeling away

of second-skin humidity      in exchange for an un-shrugable

roll-neck cold. I smile partially.     Behind me, a fair Willow

beams, past unruffled, a thousand possibilities gathered

‘round her like the colours of spring stitched     into her

blouse; I grasp for the threads     that drag behind

graduation’s gown, take up a needle     sew myself in.