Dr. Padmashree R P Poet Haibun

Unnamed Labour

Before the light comes, her hands are already in the wet dark. She works the way a thirsty field works: it knows the rain is coming long before the sky admits it. There is no name on her badge. Her mother taught her this over roti dough: press slow, stay warm, trust a thing to give before you ask it to. So she presses, and the water wakes. Like her, it has no name, and like her, it moves anyway.

before the dawn wakes 
her hands and the water move
as one quiet stream

On the roof, others hold her work up to the light.  Their smiles are borrowed rain, bright for a moment and then gone. Their badges are puddles pretending they once fell from the sky. The crowd claps for the puddles. Nobody looks down to where the real rain runs.

puddle-badges shine 
a sky they never came from
mirrored in their smiles

She walks home with mud on her knees and the smell of her mother's roti in her mind. A monsoon forecast glows in someone else's palm, unread, the way her work shines where no one looks. But water keeps its own accounts. It remembers every hand that set it free.

nameless as the rain
still the river learns to read
her hand on each stone

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