Through My Window


I spend a lot of time in my kitchen doing the dishes

not in any piecemeal fashion, one or few at a time

I let the sink be filled with soiled plates and then some

till a faint foul smell come from the ones at the bottom.

I then stand over the sink, little crouched

scrubbing the grime and oil clean

with a sense of purpose and immense satisfaction.

On most of the days, it is the most meaningful thing I do.

There is a window over the sink, to a few apartments across.

In one of them, I see a woman living mostly alone.

I know I would not enjoy living alone

still her life from the window view is aspirational.

She wears a lot of black dresses and bakes a lot.

I amble through the dark and quiet of my apartment

in the ungodly hours of Insomnia and see her

watching TV, munching something from a big red tin.

I see smile and calm on her face.

The smile and calm are my projection, I barely see her face

I imagine her happy to calm me down.

Once I saw her baking at 3 am.

It makes me sad on days I do not see her at 3 am.

The conceptual and metaphorical 3 am

when the foam of self-loathing and pity burst.

It smells of my school chemistry lab.

Strange, for I was good at lab.

I bake and eat fresh and warm chocolate cake

the lingering aroma of baking, holding my hand.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Memory

She realised it within minutes she turned her back after the hug goodbye. Her last memory of him being locked in the way he smelled. Of Hamam and a musty sweater. She knows that the retrieval promise for memories burned on smells can be very tentative. As the RW drive for our memories, they are more susceptible to erasure and overwriting than sights and sounds. She paused her steps and put her nose breathing on hold. Before plunging into the miasma of smells from the swarming bodies and everything else on the street.
Read more

A Tasbeeh

I have a Tasbeeh in my possession. It has 100 big round wooden beads. Occasionally I use them to do my chants. I do the Dhikr exactly as I was taught when I was a child. I go through the chain repeating the chants 33 times. I do not do them less or more. I do not question the logic behind it. I am just glad that I have something to do during the times I cannot recognise myself. During the times I stand failed in my own rationality. During the times when it is only the air I breathe that has any meaning. The Tasbeeh I have, the one I carry along everywhere with my migraine and anxiety medicines, belonged to my father. It belonged to my father during that period in my life when I could love him and before I lost that ability. Before I stopped needing his hugs to calm to me down after a bad math test paper. Before I learned that love entails hate and pain. Before he turned into someone else under the weight of his failed marriage and ambitions. I constantly play spot-the-simila...
Read more