The kitchen was busy, chefs and waitresses up and down with hot dishes.
Butts butting on each other.
She too in the packed restaurant relentlessly pacing around hoping to make ends meet.
With a pot of hot chilli sauce freshly made still hot, she took on to the passage.
Minding each step, slow and steady was her motion.
But a loud clap from behind moved her… her boss cursing her again pinning her shoulder.

“Missy if you cannot do this job let me give it to someone else. You’re taking all the time to take this simple post of chilli to the deli – hurry!”

She passed.

The pot dances on her hands gravity seems to be losing her.
Her nerves close in on her chest and the heat from the handles slowly seeps through her oven gloves to her hands. Her face darkens in fear and she jumps up a little bit and a bubble of the hot sauce as spicy as it was bursts into her eyes.

She lets out a cry, a pitiful scream as she dangles along the corridor with the pot of hot chilli sauce. She tries to manage her grip, but the pot is on a journey of its own … jiggling and juggling.

When she hits the wall the pot bumps on her breasts and all the goods ooze out running on her body. It goes like a tremor. Her hands shiver ,the pot splashes and breaks to the floor.
She pulls her shirt away from her body not managing the tears on her eyes, now cascading down her face.

The sauce digs into her arm and stomach roasting her bit by bit.
It prickles her and her skin turns into a yellowish fold of flesh.
Her flesh as red as the sauce is exposed bare.
Set alight in broad daylight.
The boss returns running, calling her a careless fool .
But rushes her to ER, third degree burns so they called it.
That day I came from school to see mama in bandages, heart in stiches.

The scar was never erased from my brain and heart.
It has a home there.