She...

squats on her knees,
folds her legs at times
on the passenger crossing ‘sky-walk’
near Manipal Hospital
which I take to cross the road on busy mornings.

And as I crib to myself for the day -
full of silly number matching and nonsensical calls on how to split the very same silly numbers -
that God gives me,

she sits there every single morning,
her white hair strewn all over her forehead, ears and neck,
with moist eyes,
a shapeless mouth that she uses to speak to herself
and
ears awaiting the sound of each dong that little coins would make on contact with the floor before her.

I saw her weeping today, her grandson sitting next to her, consoling her,
as she grabbed the six little coins that I slipped into her coarse palms;
she looked at me, tears in her eyes,
trying as hard as she could
to stretch her shapeless lips to a U, that they could never attain…

I froze,
stopped,
looked away
and
ran,
trying as hard as I could
to un-stretch the inverted U that streams from my eyes found easy to flow through…