.

May 2, 2022

Having said it was a heck of a day, I realized I had forgotten my umbrella too. With a confused rotation of my coat’s padded shoulders, my head tilted and upturned towards the groaning grey sky, my eyes blinked in reflex when a drop of drizzle splashed near my eyebrow, like an overused bulb my eye socket felt bitter and burning. The thin, wispy baby hairs on my hairline, moist and stuck to the skin were wiped with the sleeves of my coat which looked like it was soaked into a chalice full of blue ink. While my other hand hung and strained small plastic polythene.

I climbed upstairs to the narrow staircase, dark and ringing from my heavy steps. The arrival of the evening was sooner from the gloomy weather, with a squeak of the rusty hinges, I was inside, noticing nothing in the darkness of my room. I knew there was a window behind the curtains, one swipe of curtains would lead me to the spectacle- a belt of bicycle lanes running parallel to my gates, my dad’s behind bent over, popped from his bobbing umbrella, my mother inspecting the limbed out part of our house which we call our little garden, while the water poured down, bulleting my neighbor’s azaleas.  I knew right next to me was my four-legged bed, mighty and quietly asleep like a mythical standing horse, the lack of ringing heavy steps, and the gentle, ardent, soft feeling that my feet felt through the insoles of my shoes was a sign that I was standing over my sky-blue, very floral, textured rug. I also knew there was a closet right across the bed, whose mirrors showed me my face whenever I sat upright facing it. The closet was square and boxed, a hybrid of a mirror on the left and a wooden cabinet on the right. With a good measured step, I managed to sit upright in my bed, completely soaked, my bum thawing a semi-circle at the edge of my bedsheet. I looked into the darkness enclosed around the closet, I was afraid that some listless figure, misty and transparent, might materialize out of this darkness, perhaps a shadow of a shadow. I suddenly closed my eyes in fear and stretched for my lamp on my nightstand, the blue polythene hung to my index fell violently into a crash while the lights revealed an empty room, familiar and forever unchanged.

The blue polythene spat like a failed parachute, limp, and spilled- a rolled-over bottle of coke, a packet of sausage, a noodle, and a cracked egg. It seemed like I was hungry and returning back to my room after letting my parents know I was back home. I guess I didn’t tell them that I had just found out that my high school friend had passed away.  With all the contents of the blue polythene on the floor, right next to it were my heavy black leather boots, the trinkets of rain blobs still remaining and sliding, unabsorbed to the leather, identical to an expressionless crying face. Which kept me wondering, what makes a crying face, I started looking for attributes of a crying face, I watched myself in the mirror, and I checked the lump on my throat, troubled eyebrows, droopy mouth, or shortness of breath. Like the leather itself, I just found trinkets of tear blobs sliding to my cheeks and then my chin.

In memory of

Simran moti

(1999-2022)