a fatigue that sleeps.

-bhalo potty hoyeche ?

-god baba

-did you clean

-yes baba

-face ta wash koro

-your hand is so big baba. either my face is small or your hand is big.

-hmm

(running water)

-face ta mocho. chul ta achrao.

-baba i am an alpha male. you are a beta male.

-okay

the conversation wisps into the room. giving it a strange paternal look, not fashioned well before. 
this infantilizing of a grimy adulthood does not look good.
i am somehow, past all of my grudges, happy that he is doing what he needed to a long time ago.
happy he is doing something.

my sister looks a lot like him.
it is scary the imprint he has left on us.
it is scarier how we have learnt to love without leaving because of him.

-

it is not a good time for anybody in this house. yet, they seem to fare well.

the loneliness looms like an unwanted guest.

ironically, like most of our guests here.

the pain hits. again. it is excruciating. the body has started to riot against an addiction. that pain, i will never forget. the room is dark, so he can't see my eyes bursting into soft sobs. the clinical differences do not matter now. "ma? maer kache jabo. ma ? ma." there is such sadness in those words. such hurt. he lies next to me, worried. wondering if another medicine would help. he fails to understand the undertone of the situation. the body begs to release. one last hit. it promises. 
i cry, betraying the want for the first time.

he hugs me.

it feels alien. 

i am too tired to fight the conventions i withhold. 

i give into the tire.

i give into the pain.

and i wait for the storm to pass.

a skinny boy with big glasses and a loose shirt comes up to me. i sit at the edge of a terrace and it is late in the afternoon. the terrace is dirty and there are dusty footprints nobody bothered to clean. 
he sits beside me and dangles his feet from the edge, like me.
"how have you been ?" he asks.

"not great."
"funny. you've got everything. what's not to like?"
i look at him for the first time.
"i'm not grateful for it, like you are. the indifference. the subsidized love. i'm good. "
he laughs. 

i sound privileged. 

i am privileged. 

i talk of problems which are born in rich homes.
"you make me seem so, uh, victimized. so helpless. fortunately the only difference we bear is the fact that you know, and you accept. i know, but i don't." he says.
"isn't that very synonymous to ignorance ?"
"it is. but i like the ignorance. the bliss. it's a dependable instruction sheet for me. i've been taught not to trust my conscience. how's the acceptance working out for you?"
i don't answer. it isn't working out for me. except sometimes, when i get to look at things as a hypervigilant pseudo-intellectual. makes me look cool.
"you're doing fine. it passes. all of it."
"it's cyclical. none of it matters."
he looks remorseful. "it subdues. slowly. when its name has been dragged as justification. when its name has lost its meaning."

we both look up. towards the sun that sets. towards the flight of crows returning home.
"i am sorry."

i'm not sure who was. both, perhaps.

-

before you cross the street,

take my hand.
life is what happens to you

when you're busy making other plans.

the monster's gone.

he's on the run

and your daddy's here.

beautiful beautiful beautiful

beautiful boy.

i don't cry when i write, but i did anyways. when coming undone, leave no knots behind.

fathers and their daughters are the same sort of storms, i believe. 

angry, disheveled and remorseful.

self contained.

self destructive.

for the longest time, a guilt sat around me like the smell of urine in hospitals. heavy and putrid.

because my mother pushed out a daughter for her to resemble the ghost of an unpredictable man.

because father and daughter often exchange smirks over the mother's shoulder, hissing in tongues they believe foreign to her - as though she never had a father of her own ( a kind one, in fact ) and didn't also wish once to be as intangible as the men who were never there.
they agree that she is not as bright as they are. unfortunately this collusion does not save the daughter from the mother's fate.

because every night father tells the mother all the ways daughter has disappointed him, and mother sees a snake wrapping around her child's throat, whispering sweetness into the ear while tightening its hold.

not on purpose, of course.

because the daughter does not notice the venom until long after it has replaced her mother's blood, until she is just as cold and lonely as her father.

sometimes i wish i opened my mouth right in front of my father. so the words would fall out better. so we wouldn't work so hard to translate what the other says. 

i do not like feeling like an artist's unfinished piece of art. one that they look at with pity and disgust.
unwanted. unnecessary.

i always do.

-

the last two years are hard for parents.
except, the years have made my mother a living lobotomy

and all that had kept my father afloat, has started to sink.

all these years he never learnt to swim.

meanwhile, my tethers have started to change

to grow. like vines. with the flowers on them.

strange how my selfishness comes up very conveniently.

in a twisted way, very inconvenient.

i was planning to be very secluded this year. very 

invisible.

it is so cold.

this must be a seasonal depression.

-

yellow and white
like on the calendula tube that didun brought out every time i got hurt.

yellow and white

like the flowers we got for birthdays and funerals.

yellow and white

like the saraswati pujo saris

yellow and white

like gopal er chador 

yellow and white

like 5th avenue bryant park station

yellow and white 

like the hearts.

yellow and white.

ma really likes those colours.

shame,

baba likes blue.

-

                           unknown. - i wish i could solve my sickness by being sent to the seaside. faraway.