By Kabir Deb
It is hard to climb a body without clawing the skin. I think that’s why monkeys use their nails on the bark of a tree, which has a home for them. The sky tells him that the last month of a cold winter ended with his lips resting on her body. The room in which he surrendered himself to her now has the sadness of how there is going to be a tomorrow without her, how he is going to crash over his words, and how cruel a big city can be if there’s no home to live in.
He wakes up with a heavy body that is now tethered to an obligation of being at a place where his words won’t find a single way to reach her. At one point of time, he dreamt that success was going to be a subject he would read in her eyes. But last night, with a lump in his throat, he knew that even if he rotated his neck to death, his eyes wouldn’t get to see her goofy smile, and her fleshy hands fighting hard with the gaze of the rest of the world to not touch him.
His spoiled mind realizes that it is going to lose itself this evening before exposing its interior to people who do not carry the woman’s smell. He lifts his underarms to touch her, knowing that this isn’t the ocean she is going to meet with a glowing sun above her. So, he slides his index finger into his mouth and makes the tip rest on his tongue. It has her taste. An indicator of how she is walking to an airport to meet people he doesn’t know, to a place where he is not a shadow standing beside her.
Before putting on his attire, he rubs his thighs, and they still have a memory of her weight. The phone vibrates on the table, and he has to take it, since the caller expects him to be on time. He assures the woman on the other side that he’ll be there in a few minutes, although he knows that he’ll die a thousand times and someone has to muscle him back to life. He would do better living a short death before them since the one he is looking for isn’t there to make him smile. All his alternate self can smile about is how, after being a mess and dying a desperate death, he is going to wake up knowing that he will still be on his bed to write her and about her presence.
Sitting on that chair, which has become unbearable for his body, he speaks about a sadness he didn’t write or think about. He just knows that it is coming from a space that sobs without anyone listening. The roar of the plane she is on right now undermines his cries. The man that speaks about the landscapes in her ears stops his voice from getting into her core. The people who made her a part of their plan drown her mind in a conversation about things they intend to do. He can’t reach her, and yet he has to smile with his words pasted to his hands. There’s no vase to break – or a person to stab. All he can do is to keep on going through her stories more than his own and to remember again and again what pain feels like.
Kabir Deb works as Interview Editor for the Usawa Literary Review.
Usawa Literary Review © 2018 . All Rights Reserved | Developed By HMI TECH
Join our newsletter to receive updates