4 October, 12 AM

By Jayati Das

If you turned the pages now, I could almost forget that story. A request for a water bottle, I hope not too much of an inconvenience. No. The two stairways- one locked beyond the Department of Philosophy. It is probably the same two or three steps that you would sit outside sometimes, to lean against a definite venue, where the books would be met and exchanged.

You wonder why you don’t remember seeing many cats around the lawns and red buildings. Perhaps wiped off your conscious memory like a milk moustache in afterthought. Nothing you say seems to be making sense, but you do not wish to find out how insecure silence feels. Between the tread of your (sensible) shoes and the forced fantasies of my sleep, there are many details that you leave out. Like the time you wanted to say please let me say goodbye properly, or like the photos you would save in your ‘Written’ folder- to revisit those Tuesdays. You were not even in them.

I think you were born on a Tuesday, something one says in passing and later wonders if they misheard after all. I don’t know. Pens are the only acceptable gifts on that day. Someone sometimes shows up with a gratitude card. You do neither. Talk to me. Listen.

I want to count the folds of your half-sleeved shirts and your comfortable grey pants. Later your full-sleeved, moderately heavy sweaters that I would turn outside-in again, before I kept them away on the swivel chair. You have barely looked at the shoes- the brown feet, I mean shoes- because their aura floats into your vision like a lucid animal that bit your hand till you cringed with the burning pain, only to awaken to a numb hand crushed against your second pillow. I do not even attempt to imagine your head against the crinkly white because too much hope ends up hurting more than the disappointment of its death. You are still there, and my lettered thoughts are stuck in the mouth of this letterbox- someone said they no longer use them. This is not a kangaroo dustbin that they littered across Nehru Park. Nor the casual emails I have learnt not to expect before a day. Because you will reply then. I will not ask more questions that frighten me when neatly typed out in Times New Roman, size 11. 12 will make the last line jump into the abyss of tedious editing. How many films can you cram inside a 4.67 GB DVD, non-rewritable? Please watch all of them, sometimes remembering me in between. I know I do not matter but I am relevant.

Do not care, I promise- that the replies are later than usual, and that I only need a reaffirmation of my most detailed self, it is no fiction I write of a child, I did not laugh when you thrashed your brother. How long ago do you dream of those days that you left behind in the numerous cups of tea and some surprise food- I did not eat much then- but I do miss them. The cups. The sentences too long for me to follow but you understood them with a formal smile- that always puts me at ease. The pillow is not wet with tears but with longing- I sleep half and half hope of those dreams that come irregularly- the happiness constant.

The touch is like a warm biscuit- it matches your tea. I want to lock the door but not hide. The table is white with brown nailed edges- the static shut off since so many years (only 5 now). The jacket, The North Face- I think- a grey again, with piping enough to match my desire for your age and your self. I cannot bear to hold your hand to declare me your equal. I only watch you look at me through your sentences, but you can never break my heart because I never told you that you are important—that every night I want that dream, that classroom- that story I don’t ever forget. I want you to be with me in there and not leave.

Jayati Das is a research scholar from Tezpur University, India, and holds a Masters degree in English Literature from the University of Delhi. She has won over a dozen prizes in creative writing and has been published in The Assam Tribune, The Sentinel, and journals like The Golden Line.