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A Day of Lies.

I was intended. My existence was wanted. Yet, to my creator, I still am a mistake. Born at his lips, wrapped around his fingers, he still doesn't want me as his.

He cries because of me at night when the gleam in his eyes dies down. It's a torturous plea, but I remain. In the rings he makes of me, in what he inhales, in what remains of his lungs.

She seeks me out in his room. Papers scattered, trust shattered. She can't find me anywhere, but she knows me all the same. She's seen me before, in her father.

I escaped through the windowsill of their tiny bathroom, but in the dingy light, she took me by my throat. I feel her hands still, stealing my air. She throttled her father's fear and crushed it under her chappals.

The lot of me, she drowned in a blue bucket. My mouth opened for help, but all I could take was more water. I wondered if that is what I made her feel like.

Now again, her hands smoothing out the bedsheets. I escape under my creator's pillow. I run miles in his mind, his heart racing me.

She hopes for my death. I can feel it in her gaze. He wants me alive but not known. A dirty secret.

He gave birth to me with trembling lips and desperate eyes. But he delivers me differently each time, to different faces. I meet my family at his mouth.

A rush, a momentary thrill. His pleasure comes at my existence. I felt powerful once. I grew stronger with him.

But when the night fell, my existence was a weight to him. His face lined with guilt. He chose me, yet he looks at me with fear. Unwind me then: I demanded, writhing in his body for an escape. I lingered in his thoughts, in every joy he felt. I sought to destroy what he had taken from me.

He offered me up for slaughter. Like she was the altar. His tongue thrashed around in pretty words, but I stained his teeth yellow and black at the end of that day. I will always be his, even as she stays by him in white for the promise of I, who shouldn't exist.

I am eternal, and I will promise her as they are promised to each other. Exorcise me, I will taunt her, am I not what remains of her father?

He wraps himself around me. His arms crush me deeper. He thinks of me as a habit, a secret for the shadows. I will swim in the euphoria of his mind, a parasite for the ages.

He tries to rid himself of me when she confesses her love; so deep, I threaten to leave him behind. He tries when she prays to the gods, that if I exist, to be rid of me before her eyes meets the sight. I am his truth; I am hysterical in her dreams and texts.

I was his before I was hers. She took me, swallowed me whole as he rid himself of me at the bridge of my birth. Her womb is a tight fit but I make my way, I love all people the same.

She cries as she breathes me in and takes in crumpled packets of nicotine. Her saree wrinkles against me. Her father comes to life when I do.

She's only a dutiful daughter.

Is that what she tells herself when I take her son's breath? Is that what she screams when I give it back to him? Is that what she says when I tease them with terror?

They can't take me away anymore. I live in his inhaler and their mouths. His lungs suffer for their sins.

I am his, I am hers. A stain in their flesh and blood, a stab at their souls. Will I be wielded as a knife or a sickening truth?

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