The Happily Divorced Boss Poem by Pankhuri Sinha

The happily divorced boss

That she had the cheeks to say
I looked sad
When i was actually expressing
A mild disapproval
Of a very gregarious welcome
She, alone, was extending to me
After my group event
After my cooking for all
And i couldn't dance
Along her tunes
Strange discovery
I was newly married
And perhaps
Facing some marital politics
Of affection assessments
And this sudden arrival
Of this very happily divorced boss
In my then husband's brand new
Foreign posting
Whose initial stories
Had been how her husband
Had left
For their native land
Of Brazil
For a cigarette
And hadn't come back
And they had remained
The best of friends
And the judge presiding over
Their divorce
Had wondered so much
If they actually
Wanted a divorce
And she couldn't stop telling me
What a happy divorce
She had had
Just like
She couldn't stop inviting me
On endless Fridays
Sometimes
Completely alone
With stories and pictures of family in Brazil
And a boyfriend enlisted
In the American army
Fighting somewhere
And she had taken it upon herself
That i was sad
And she had to make me happy
In her theory
I was sad
Away from my homeland
The similar kind of sadness
That had taken
Her husband
Back to their homeland
She hadn't been able to keep him
And was so intent
On taking care of me
Banking solely on my outright refusal
To repeated lonely invitations
And all of this
Bordered
On what the white people
Often talk about
Harassment
And she was a white Brazilian
Saying proudly
Her grandfather was Portuguese
She was not a native Brazilian
Native Brazilian politics
Was something else
Yes, she was independent
In a very infectious sort of way
And amazingly
Interested in sadness
Where it didn't exist
And upon my joining an institution
Had been told
They were a happy family
And this very strange politics
Of the happy and the sad
Had culminated in situations
Divorce included
Where i was being told
I had been
Through a trauma.

Pankhuri Sinha