I called you ‘anda’ when we first met. The pink shell of your mouth made a pearl of an assalamualaikum for me.  Our husbands were in the front room, and we went to the kitchen, sitting cross-legged with our feet tucked away for respect. I brought us a plate of piping hot jemput-jemput and you ate the sugary fritters, blowing through your mouth, using your hand like a fan. Your fingers seemed plump, juicy, like the succulents in my garden. I wondered if they would feel as soft and pliant to touch.

When we met at that satay place in Kajang, the air full of the smoky, earthy smell of roasting meat, I called you ‘awak’. I said, awak tak bosan? You said, no, you weren’t bored when your husband was away so much for work, and I wondered if I was a particularly ungrateful kind of wife. You said, can I try? pointing at my glass of pink bandung gently sweating in the humidity. You pursed your lips perfectly around the straw, taking greedy gulps. After you left, I fitted my mouth as closely as I could to the ring of bright red lipstick on the straw.

When I invited you to Port Dickson, I called you ‘kamu’. We bought rambutan from a roadside stall, and I made a joke about how the hairy fruit looked just like testicles. You frowned and swatted my arm, but your dimples peeked out anyway. We took a mat down to the beach, our bare feet crunching into the sand. I shelled the rambutans, handing them to you one by one. You popped the oval fruit, translucent like lychees into your mouth, making throaty sounds of pleasure. You pulled out clean seeds which you gathered in a pile on the sand.

I called you ‘engkau’ when you invited me to your place for lunch. We ate assam fish and rice, your right hand making a perfect bud when you gathered a mouthful together. Your food tasted like everything – spicy, sweet, tart, buttery. You called me ‘engkau’ then too. We reached for the dish at the same time, our hands brushing together, warm and soft. You didn’t snatch your hand away. You didn’t say the word ‘haram’. What you did say was, it’s beautiful, the Malay phrase for pronoun, ‘kata ganti diri’. A word to replace yourself.

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Sumitra writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). She works in mental health. You can find her and her other publication credits on twitter: @pleomorphic2