Varuthaayi.

"വരാം," ഞാൻ പറയുമ്പോൾ, "പോകാം" എന്ന് പറയാനുള്ള ആ പേടി.

My legs prickle like the seeds of a strawberry, and I feel like tearing myself apart today. I keep picking at the wound that heals every two days, only for it to break open again—blood and flesh. I feel trapped in my own skin, my body will never be what I want it to be. There are things I’m supposed to become, but time is slipping away. I applied for many things. I have sent my name into the void—eight, ten, how many more? They have to call me today. If not, I won’t be who I need to be. Tomorrow, I’ll be hopeless again. I can’t hold on to who I am, so how will time hold on to me?

I eat the yellow as if it might bring some joy. One piece is thin and crispy, the bite sounds, and I feel it. The next is thick and bland—someone like me must have cut it. One is unexpectedly sweet, even though it isn’t brown like I expected. How it lies to me. I look in the mirror, I look away.

Another is too salty. I eat 250 grams of it, but joy never comes. I eat like I want him back, like at the end of this, I’ll find togetherness again. I keep eating it, toil at my tongue, heaviness in my heart. Its not the taste that I chase. I imagine my grandfather next to me, nothing to worry about, his trimmed mustache brushing against my cheek. I can almost feel him graze my cheek, rough. Real. I say goodbye in Arabic, and I feel the love in it. We never say goodbye like it’s forever. “I’ll come,” I tell him, afraid to say “I’ll leave,” because it might come true. 

Goodbye tastes like grief, so I do not say it. Writing this feels sinful. It's an admittance, not one of relief. 

My grandmother kisses me, and I lean down because she’s so short now. Her arm is in a cast and the others is pricked every once in a while from the sweetness in her blood. The yellow is almost gone. I think if I leave to buy more, I will break. I eat nothing else, no lunch, no supper, just the yellow.

I’ll never get tired of this, but I know I should share. They told me to, but I’m selfish. I can’t let it go, even if God tells me you won’t stay—not in your wrinkled skin, not in your ailing health. I still hear your words: “I can’t pick you up anymore.”

These tears escape me, and I feel like I’m crawling on the floor—now and forever. But I stand, so you can have peace, knowing that I can if you leave. But the sadness, I can’t bear. I don’t want to mourn you before you become a memory, but it feels so close now that I can’t hold you the way I used to.