We Come From The Same

I am you. You are me.

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

I cross off a day on the calendar left to me by my parents, a confusing mix of numbers overlaid with advice on auspicious days. The red prints sit jarringly with the sterility of the Gregorian calendar, black numbers awash with superstition, a stain on its clinically precise body.

Memory is a strange thing. It fills me with embarrassment. Shoving this very calendar in my parents’ house, from ten years ago, into a drawer. Opening windows, airing out the house so there would be no lingering scent of incense, scrubbing turmeric stains out from the kitchen counter. When my friends come to visit, our teenage selves mould our bodies into mirror images of each other within the whitewashed walls of my parents’ house, even as our palates find the comforts of home in the taste of pasta, curry or miso. As the clock ticks closer to their time of return to their respective homes, I gently usher everyone away and return the house to its lawful state. One where markers of belonging and unbelonging stand off against each other in quiet truce as the smell of curry permeates the house, enveloping me with the warmth of my mother.

I am you.

I hang my calendar by the front doorway as you did, marking off the days in blue pen not dissimilar to yours. We keep our house keys hanging from the same hook that we hang the…