While cleaning the entire house all by myself, I came across my mother multiple times. Her actions had seeped into me — the most intimate portrait of a woman I could replicate, now that I need to be one myself.
Sweeping twice and then using a rag to clean the floor, followed by a mop. Wiping my feet incessantly so that the floor doesn’t get dirty anymore. While I had the luxury of smoking a cigarette after every task, and falling onto my bed, all she could do after cleaning was go into the kitchen and start preparing a meal. I let that step go by not eating at all. In a city far away from my mother, the idea of her gets cloudy and she is a misty image, akin to a vision of somebody capable of saving me, less human. My idea of her becomes more precise with further blurring of her personhood. Our phone calls are sparse, cool and even filled with jokes.
scrubbed surfaces too hard, the bristles fell all over the basin
Garnering confidence from this fantasyland in my head where she and I are good and loving to each other, I tell her my problems, still, like a fool. She brushes them aside, without any acknowledgment and continues on about my brother, herself, and everybody else in the world who is not me. The heart shaped balloon deflates and so does 23 years old Heera, back to being twelve, angry. The tears feel hotter than usual, my eyes sting. The fantasyland is built on a cloud that rains upon the real world.
my palms almost bled from all the soaps and detergents and cleaning but it felt like a prayer. clean, painful, repenting