What finds you, wherever you go?
that which hangs by a thread
The clouds part to give way to the sun, charming with the warmth you can only feel after a rain shower. We walk along the canteen aimlessly, talking about whatever there is to life and the teen girl experience. The ground’s still spongy from the rain and we’re wasting most of our energy avoiding the muddy parts. Our shoes are muddy.
I stay admiring the white and purple flowers that would bloom and drop to the ground one by one. I pick up two and put them in my phone case. Two more in her hair. There’s something crawling on my skin, my arms, there’s a confused protest. There’s something moving, something so small trying to grab my attention that its efforts are merely a tickle. We exchange glances, we hold eye contact. I drop all eight of its legs back onto the tree as it scurries away, blending into the white flowers as it moves.
I wonder if the flower now wedged in the knot of her braid meant anything to the tiniest white soul. I wonder if its house dangled from the thinnest string attached to the anther or the stamen- I wonder if I uprooted it. I wonder how many times I’ve failed to notice the hundreds of tiny white spiders dangling from these branches. They look exactly like the flowers. They brush against your arms and shoulders, a brush so light it goes unnoticed.
They spend their days waiting for bugs to eat sitting on the cusps of flower petals, they don’t think you’re pretty enough to bite. She finds one on her shirt and stomps it under the thick soles of her mary janes.
I don’t tell her the flower in her hair was someone’s whole house.
you know you’ve seen it
It’s hot, and it’s humid, and you can hear the kites screeching in the sky looking for food, swooping down every now and then to capture a kill. Not one cloud will protect you from the post-noon Sun, but the thick concrete walls of your classroom a British man once designed still try. There’s a lady explaining something, but it’s futile when the sheer intensity of the Karachi heat melts your mind. And in the way they tend to, the fans slowly come to a halt after the lightbulbs go out, all at once.
In the absence of five clicking fans it’s suddenly much easier to hear the scraping of the chalk against the blackboard while the teacher talks, but even she’s had enough today. We’re given a task and she sits down with her back to the cold concrete.
I rest my head on my hands, my palms on my eyes. I press them against my eyeballs gently until the scattered light starts rearranging itself into shapes and colors, what starts off green becomes blue and red and pink, skulls that turn into spheres and then pins and needles, cascading and folding into Orion and Andromeda and then faces of my friends and people I’ve passed by until the weight on my eyes starts decreasing and decreasing still.
There’s a tap on my shoulder from the girl that sits next to me. She chews on her nails when she’s not studying. There’s another lady standing at the lectern and I stare at the girl for a few more minutes. I hope she cannot see the universe unfolding in my eyes, because I can see hers.
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what you cannot define
There are things you want to write about, but you just can’t.
For so long throughout my childhood I believed some people could read minds. And then began the self-censorship, not just of what I said or wrote but even of what I think. I could never touch people I kept secrets from, lest they find out what lies in my chest through mere touch. I’d lift my feet off the floor of my dad’s car- just so my parents wouldn’t accidentally read my thoughts.
I had an irrational fear of the night sky. A fear that a star twinkling would turn out to be a drone, a fear that there was something larger not everyone could see in the black gaps between one gleam and another. A fear of the moon. I would stare through the window at it, trying desperately to find what other found so dear. I found nothing but fear. The same fear. I saw a lunar eclipse once and I refused to go out at night for months.
Unknown calls. Unknown emails. Software errors. Glitches. Open windows at night. Everything found a way into my conscience, hinting at worst-case outcomes every single time.
I don’t need you to tell me what that means. I don’t want a psychological evaluation; I don’t want a diagnosis. I want a way to write it down. A way to shift that fear to another’s heart, even if brief. A way to know that I am not and was never as alone as I thought.
the persistence of memory
More often than not, I’ve placed the ball of my palm tightly against my shut eyes and seen kaleidoscopes so skillfully woven that the fabric of existence itself faded out into hues beyond those you could see. Remained awake long into the night watching my mind create, and opened my eyes to the clocks melting- and then I witnessed Salvador Dali.
Flipped open a page in a literary journal I had no business reading at nine- there it was. The Persistence of Memory, the clocks and the cliffs and the ants and the face my mind could only register as the body of a dead horse. Millions of ants crawling up my legs to my chest and the collarbones and inside my mouth, shaking them off and shutting the book. Giving myself a paper cut.
And whenever I saw ants, I thought of the picture. Went back and opened it and looked at it and thought about it. Felt the insects crawl under my skin over and over and over. Stayed awake at night again, asking my mom to recite a poem that shook the ants all over again. Thought about it until sleep took me through endless corridors. The same repeated dream. Running through hallways, going down stairs. Forever.
Yesterday I asked some friends how looking at The Persistence of Memory made them feel.
Disgusted. Horrified.
Confused.
And for once it was easy to know why I loved the painting so much.
There are no words I can write that make people feel exactly what I did, but there is a painting.
Introversive. Uneasy.
Curious.
And yet you keep looking.
Wonder. Calm.
Inspired.
And the clocks keep melting.
that which hangs by a thread/
you know you’ve seen it/
what you cannot define/
the persistence of memory.
