Bananas

My mother gives me a pound note,
creased, warm like a secret.
Go buy a pound of bananas, she says,
and I, too quick, ran out.
I walk the tiled floor of the grocers,
past rows of sparkly gala apples,
ruby grapes size of gobstoppers.
I point at the bananas, shade of turmeric
in my mother’s dal. I drop the note in
the grocer’s hand. A pound of bananas,
I say like an adult beside a dome of fruit.
Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.
The grocer looks over at me, puzzled,
nods, picks up a clingy bunch of bananas,
a quick exchange. I hold the weight in both
hands, fear of splitting the brown paper
bag. I stroll away in my pride-filled chest.
Kids kicks a ball at my feet.
I pass my mother the parcel like a sacred
offering. She holds out her hand. My legs
tremble, there’s no change, I say.
Why, you spent it, she asks.
You said buy a pound of bananas? I answer.
You didn’t ask to weigh them, just gave him
the money? How can you be so stupid.

Ansuya was the joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize in 2024. Her work has been short-listed for the Alpine and Aurora Prize, highly commended at Erbacce. Her poems have appeared in Drawn to the Light, Gypsophila, Last Stanza, Rattle, Renard, Crowstep, Cerasus, Artemesia Arts. Instagram at ansuya_a_ and ansuyaa.bsky.social.