regarding want

schizophrene love

They set the field on fire that afternoon. The milky grey smoke carried the smell of dead greenery over to the house. There had been no electricity since morning, the milk had curdled. The brightness of the afternoon was jarring, it felt like living inside the welding work the carpenters did all day behind the house. I laid on the bed with one foot on the floor, the latent coolness doing nothing to rid me of the heat.

I had been nursing a backache for the past week or so, and that was the most comfortable conclusion of all positions I had tried to put my body into. I could hear a song on one of the carpenter’s phones, the quiet afternoon stitched by the cackling of the fire and the beats of an 80s hindi song about promising to meet without letting the world know.

I was aware of Romi moving about in the house, somewhere away from me. His leisurely body mapping the entire house plan, leaving his imprint for me to chase on lonely nights.

Some nights I would wear his shirt and imitate him — standing with arms folded, staring into space, thinking of something untouched by everything else. His making was markedly mysterious, and a cause of pain and anger to mine. In early years, I would throw fits and sob into his arms, begging him to let me in. He would lean into me and make me drink something poisonous with his kiss that I would forgive him for his stoic refusal to allow me his being.

I would often forget in these moments that he never asked for forgiveness, he was just tending to me like he would to an irate child, stubborn and asking for the world.

When the song blurred into the sound of a barrage of vehicles passing by, Romi walked into the room and sat on the floor next to my foot. I could not get up and look at him. He started pressing my foot, the sole, the toes, the heel. I could hear him singing the same song, half words half tuneful murmurs.

I don’t remember when I fell asleep. I woke up to the weight of Romi’s head on my upper thigh, him looking at me. When our eyes met, he was unmoved, as if waiting. He ran his hand over my belly, stopping in places to remind me what he was capable of making me feel. He slid his hand under the fabric, his palm hot and sweaty, leaving a damp, cool effect on my lower abdomen. I pushed his head away gently and raised my feet back onto the bed, making space for him to lie down next to me. For a moment he seemed to consider, and for that one long moment that seemed to stretch the entirety of summer, I waited. In the end, he got up and left, to go on a walk all over the place. I turned to my side and put my hand between my thighs. I waited for another wave of sleep to wash over me.

Later in the day, the fire was still alive. The smoke had reduced but the orange was still burning bright against the violet of the evening sky. Violet, violent, violin. A colour, a symphony, a tune.

I kept reading until my eyes felt the heaviness of darkness sitting upon the eyelids. I settled in for sleep that was making its way to me in a slow rhythmic manner, like a bride on the way to her in-laws house. I could hear the footsteps getting closer, and before the slumber could cloak me over, Romi was getting under the covers next to me, his hand reaching out for whatever of me was available to take. I turned towards him entirely, all of me, all of it.