Were I An Apple to His Taste Buds?

"Old men are dirty men. Playful like cubs," printed the twenty-year-old pulp fiction.

I didn't know the margins of dirt until my twenties.
He saw the cerulean-blue, flowery cotton kurti dancing over my nutty brown skin. My young, careless façade, chatting with everyone, made me look gritty, gorgeous. I wasn’t the spotlight, but his stares circled me like moths to flame.

Clear-sky innocence, my pure head, never caught him in sin.
But my acumen had been sharpening, ever since my uterus first flushed blood each month.
It tapped the neurons of my conscious mind. I couldn't help it.
His smooth, timid calls—"How are you?" "You sing well" —were his wild pursuits.

I ponder. Marriage, without a shadow of doubt, scares me.
The daisy-like wife serving his needs. The son, begotten of their love, likewise became the forgotten spoil for a chill measure of his temporary pleasure. Few old men are dirty men, they bite the young fruit and rot their families to shame. They cite the princess when their queens have baked their built houses into sweet, royal homes.