My batman is not perfect.

When he comes over to deliver groceries,
he calls me enthusiastically to the door
to ramble about his old travels,
majestic places he’s been to when he was a truck driver
in the wild west of Pakistan,
repairs that my old car perpeptually needs,
or simply to tell me he saw me on my way to office,
while returning from his night shift,
with a sparkle in his eyes and a childish smile—
one that I don’t return, and can’t,

as if I were his friend and not his boss,
as if I could ever be anyone’s friend.


—

And yet, my batman is flawed.
Sometimes he borrows and forgets to return,
fails to clean the house and water the plants when I’m away.
Sometimes I catch him staring at my wife’s butt
when she turns in the kitchen or walks away.
He steals from the refrigerator too—
a spoonful of leftover kheer or stale rice from the night before.

But that’s just about the list of his petty crimes.


—

The way his eyes crinkle around the corners when he smiles
reminds me of a childhood that seems so distant now,
of the days when I could smile and mean it too—
when I had friends who saw me as a friend,
before I had drifted into the shelter of solitude.
Sometimes when he worries that my status might shield me
from the universal Experience of a common man,
he shares the simple truths he’s picked up
on his truck journeys, inn stays and broke days,
wrapped in exotic tales and queer jokes
that he delivers with a slap on my thigh.


—

On summer afternoons, when he lifts his arm to lean on my door,
his lack of body spray becomes noticeable,
and reminds me of the class difference between us,
making me wonder if it’s all cosmetic—
if we are indeed the same beneath our clothes and perfumes,
and spend so much and entire lives to forget that.


—

His ability to see me as a person before his boss,
and his courage to entertain the possibility
of so much as a friendship between us,
is something I deeply admire,

because it’s something I lost long ago.


—

My batman is not perfect. But maybe I never was, either.