Center of the middle

Dear Mother,

This is a letter I won't post. For you aren't to know all this.

What do I say about him?

That he is kind? He brings me flowers for the remaining change that he has. Flowers of the season. Sometimes they smell good. Most often, they smell of my boredom.

That he is loving? The fan up there doesn't dispel the smell of our sweat. And love making. It makes me blush to write of such things. But that is what even you would call it, no mother? Making love? We all make love in the hope that it exists. Else we invent it. I do.

His smoke stained kisses... His pen holding fingers... When they touch me...mother, what did you feel when father touched you? I don't want to know, lest they confirm what I don't want to hear.

We live on the fifth floor. Higher than you can imagine. I feel like a queen sometimes. A queen in my loneliness. With no subjects and an abandoned kingdom.

Down below stay a family with a kid. The kid sometimes runs up to me. It smells of baby powder-fine, soft and warm. They speak a different language. Or maybe I forgot how to talk.

The streets are long and endless. I hold his hand when we walk. He likes it that way. I? I don't mind.

I broke some of the bangles we'd bought for the wedding. I'd saved them up for the parties, wrapping them up in old newspapers as I'd seen the bangle walla. And then yesterday, they broke. Now I don't have matching bangles for the carefully chosen silk sarees. What will I wear to the parties? There are no parties.

I am happy. For that is what I am supposed to be.

Love,
Your daughter