Our cleaner pointed at the stack
Of journals, notebooks on my chair
And said she found them on the floor
Collapsed, with pages here and there.

Again, I saw, she’d stacked them wrong –
The small, on top; the big, below –
Forgetting there’s a harmony
To how they stand and how they flow.

Precarious as Buddhist cairns,
These catchers of my mental fart
Accrue as vital vertebrae
That form the backbone of my art.

I smiled and thanked and shook my head,
Forgetting she could see the last.
She waited, saw my Jenga tower,
And smiled and tied her saree fast.